Petrarch, his life and times

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HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

FiJOilf THE LIBRARY OF

BLISS PERRY

FRANCIS LEE HIGGINSON PROFESSOR
OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, EMERITUS

PRESENTED TO THE COLLEGE
SEPTEMBER 25,1947

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PETRARCH

HIS LIFE AND TIMES

BY

H. C. HOLLWAY-CALTHROP

LATI OF BALLIOL COLLKGB, OSFOJID
BUKtAR OF rrON COLL set

WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

New York : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
London: METHUEN & CO.

1907

ital y/<lo.2>^-^

TO

WILHELMINA

MY WIFE

Thb pablican, that man of sin^
To lure confiding drinkers in
And advertise his beer and wine,
Orer his door displays a sign :

So to get readers for my book

And tempt them in its leaves to look,

I at its front and entry frame

A lure, the best I know — your name.

PREFACE

IN a short Life of Petrarch, which aims at in-
teresting the reader in fourteenth -century history,
land in one of its most fascinating personalities,
■ there can be no room for the elaborate discussion
[of chronological and other "cruces." Students of
I the period know only too well how many, how
I intricate, and how exasperating these difficulties
l.are ; happily they are hardly ever of first-rate im-
I portance. In these pages I have done my best to
I ensure accuracy, and in no case have I put forward
statement without careful consideration of the
I evidence; but In no case, either, has space per-
I mitted me to give a full digest of such evidence.
I In trivial matters I have simply stated what seems
[to me the most probable version of the facts; in
' questions of more moment I have indicated the
existence of a doubt and of possible alternative
solutions. Usually, but not always, I have followed
Fracasselli, to whom all students of Petrarch and
his times owe a debt of deepest gratitude.

It is equally impossible within the limits of a
Preface to give a list of the authorities on which
any life of Petrarch must be based. Anyone who
wishes to pursue the subject further may be referred

viii PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES
to the first chapter of Dr. Koertlng's Petrarcas
Leben und Werke (Leipzig, 1878), where he will
find an admirable digest of the chief materials avail-
able to that date ; a foreign bookseller will keep
him informed as to later publications. Here I may
just mention that de Sade, Baldelli, Domenico Ros-
setti, Fracassetti, and Dr. Koerting are the modern
writers to whom my obligations are greatest.

After all, however, Petrarch himself is far and
away the most important authority for his own
biography ; the following narrative is substantially
taken from his writings, and I think there are very
few statements in it which do not find valid support
— I dare not say complete proof — there.

My cordial thanks for helpful correspondence are
due to Mr. Lionel Cust, to the Rev. E. H. R.
Tatham, to Dr. Paget Toynbee and, above all, to
Professor Ker, who has constantly encouraged my
work on Petrarch, and has given this book the in-
estimable benefit of his supervision.

Equally cordial are my thanks to three younger
friends, Mr. D. Home of Christ's College, Mr. F. W.
Hunt of Oriel, and Mr. Dennis Robertson, k.s., of
Eton, for the unstinted help with which they have
supplemented the deficiencies of my eyesight by
writing my MS., verifying my references, and cor-
recting my proofs.

Eton Coll kg r

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

Early Years, 1304-1326 . . . i

CHAPTER II
Avignon and Laura, 1326-1329 . . 26

CHAPTER III
Travel and Friendship, 1329-1336 . . 43

CHAPTER IV
Rome and Vaucluse, i 336-1 340 72

CHAPTER V
The Crown of Song, 1340-1341 . . 92

CHAPTER VI
Parma, Naples, and Vaucluse, 1341-1347 102

CHAPTER VII
Rome and Rienzi, 1347 .122

CHAPTER VIII

The Great Plague and the Death of Laura, 1348-

1349 • • • 135

CHAPTER IX
Florence and Boccaccio, 1350 .146

ix

X PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

CHAPTER X

PACE

Vauclusk, 1351-1353 • • • • • '55

CHAPTER XI
Milan and the Visconti, 1353-1354 . . .174

CHAPTER Xn
Charles IV and Prague, 1354-1357 . . . 187

CHAPTER XIII

DOMESTICA, I357-1360 . . ... 201

CHAPTER XIV

The Founder of Humanism — Petrarch's Work and

ITS Result . . . . 215

CHAPTER XV

The Sorrowful Years of the Second Plague — Deaths

OF Friends, 1360- 1363 . . . . 230

CHAPTER XVI

The Master and his Pupils— Venice, Padua, and

Pavia, 1 364-1 36 7 . . ... 244

CHAPTER XVII
The Pope in Rome, 1367-1370 . . . . 270

CHAPTER XVIII
The Last Years, 1370-1374 ... 285

CHAPTER XIX
Conclusion and Summary . ... 303

Index . . ... 309

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PkTKARCH ; FROM A COPY BY MRS. ARTHUR LbMON OP THE

PORTRAIT IN THE LaURBNTIAN LIBRARY, FLORENCE Frontispiece

PXaNC PAGE

View of Bologna ... 21

View of Avignon ... 28

Laura ; from a copy by Mrs. Arthur Lemon of the portrait

in the Laurbntian Library, Florence • 3^

The Palace of the Popes, Avignon . . 49

The Monument of Pope John XXII, Avignon . . 64

The Tombs of the Scaligeri, Verona . . . 88

The Monument of King Robert of Naples . . 94

Pope Clement VI ; from a portrait in the British Museum 107

View of Vaucluse and the Castle of the Bishop of

Cavaillon . . ... 119

rienzi ; from an italian print . . . i25

Laura; from a print in the Paduan 1819 edition of the

Canzoniere . • • 137

Boccaccio; from a portrait in the British Museum 148

The Tomb of Jacopo II da Carrara, with inscription by

Petrarch • . ... 154

Vaucluse; the Sorgue and Petrarch's Garden . . . 163

The Equestrian Statue of Bernab6 Visconti . .178

The Tomb of Andrea Dandolo, with inscription by Petrarch 184

Innocent VI ; from a portrait in the British Museum

The Tomb of Niccol6 Acciaiuoli

Petrarch's House in Venice

The Castle of Pa via ....

Urban V; from a portrait in the British Museum

Petrarch's House at ArquX

Petrarch's Tomb ....

204
214
241

253

272

288
303

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

CHAPTER I

EARLY YEARS

I
I

FRANCESCO PETRARCA, better known to
English-speaking readers as Petrarch, was a
wanderer from his birth. Owing to his father's
banishment from Florence, he was " begotten and
bom in exile " ; and throughout the seventy years
of his life he never continued long in one stay.
But the habitual stir and bustle of his existence
contrast strongly with the quiet of some of its
interludes. Few men can ever have had a more
varied experience or a wider range of interests than
this restless traveller, the companion of cardinals
and princes, the friend of great statesmen, the am-
bassador from the Lords of Milan to an Emperor,
who was also the hermit of Vaucluse, the poet of
Laura, the lover of country life known to a circle
of devoted friends as "Silvanus," the indefatigable
student, the great scholar to whom, more than to
any other man, we owe the Revival of Learning in
Europe. His character was as rich in variety as
,the circumstances of his life. He cherished great

2 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

ideals, and did more than a man may well dare to
hope towards their realisation ; but he often erred
in his application of them to the problems of prac-
tical life. Intellectually the most gifted man of his
age, he rendered incalculable service to the mental
development of mankind; but he occasionally wasted
his brilliant talent in trivial and unworthy con-
troversy. Fervent in piety, enthusiastic in friend-
ship and in the pursuit of noble aims, he was not
exempt from frailty, while the ardour of his tem-
perament explains, and may be held to excuse, a
certain want of balance in his character. We see
in him no mirror of perfection, but a man of high
virtues and splendid gifts, of quick human sym-
pathies and impulses, of a self-questioning spirit
not at unity with itself, of provoking but not ignoble
foibles, a man to admire, to pity, sometimes to
quarrel with, to love always.

Petrarch came of an ancient and honourable, but
not a noble, family. For three generations at least
his ancestors had been Notaries in the city of
Florence. His great-grandfather, Ser Garzo, was
a man of saintly life and great repute for wisdom,
the counsellor and referee not only of neighbours
and intimate friends, but of politicians and men of
letters. He lived to the age of 104. and died at
last on his birthday in the same room in which he
had been born. His son, Ser Parenzo, seems to
have maintained the honourable traditions of the
family without adding to its distinction ; but his son
again, Ser Pelracco, the father of Petrarch, was
a man of extraordinary talent, combining a refined

J

I

EARLY YEARS 3

Ftaste in literature with ability of the highest order
in the hereditary profession of the law. Born prob-
ably in 1267, he rose rapidly in the service of the
State, and before he was thirty-five years of age
had held many important public positions ; for
instance, he was Chancellor of the Commission for
Reforms, and in 1301 was a member of an Impor-
tant embassy to Pisa,

The highest dignities of the State seemed to lie
within the reasonable compass of his ambition, and
it must have been about this time that the happy
prospects of his life were crowned by his marriage
with the young and charming Eletta Canigiani.
But in the year 1302 he was arraigned before a
criminal court on a trumped-up charge of having
falsified a legal document, convicted in his absence,
and sentenced to a fine of 1000 lire or the loss of
his right hand. Banishment and the confiscation
of his property were the result of his refusal to sur-
render and take his sentence. Every one knew
that the charge was false, a pretext devised to give
some colour of justification to the banishment of a
political opponent, and that his real offence con-
sisted in his adhesion to the party of the " White
Guelfs," of which the poet Dante was the most
illustrious member.

The cross-currents of medieval politics in Italy

I are numberless, and it is hard to steer an intelligible
course among them ; every rule had almost as many
exceptions as examples, and every principle was
liable to violation to suit the convenience of its
nominal upholders. But speaking broadly, it may

4 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

be said that the Guelf championed civic indepen-
dence under the hegemony of the Papacy, the
Ghibellin personal irovernment under the sove-
reifjnly of the Emperor. How far either Pope or
Emperor exercised an effective control within his
own party depended mainly on his personal
character and that of those with whom he had
to deal ; the Angevin Kings of Naples and the
Republic of Florence were often more powerful
than the Pope, while on the Ghibellin side the
great Lords of Lombardy habitually acted as in-
dependent princes, and scarcely pretended to give
more than a nominal allegiance to the successors
of Frederick II.

In Florence the Guelf party had ruled supreme
for nearly forty years, and the political struggle
centred upon the efforts of the people to limit the
authority of the nobles. Suddenly the Guelf party
was rent in twain by a-feud which began, much as
our own Wars of the Roses are said to have begun,
in a domestic brawl. The feud spread from Pistoia,
the city of its origin, to Florence, where the nobles.
seeing in it a chance of regaining the power and
privileges recently taken from them, espoused the
quarrel of the " Blacks," or extreme Guelfs, and
accused the " Whites," the more moderate faction,
of endangering the safety of the State by encourag-
ing Ghibellinism. With Florence thus divided
against herself, the right arm of the Church was
paralysed, a state of things so serious that even
Pope Boniface VIII was for once in his life dis-
posed to moderate counsels, and nominated Charles

J

EARLY YEARS 5

of Valois, brother of the King of France and cousin
of the King of Naples, to act as mediator between
the factions. There were old ties of friendship and
alliance between the Royal House of France and
the Republic of Florence, and the great body of the
people gladly welcomed the Prince, who swore to
respect their laws and liberties, and to deal justly
with all parties. By these promises he gained ad-
mission to the city, into which he made his solemn
entry on All Souls' Day, 1301. But he was no
sooner within the walls than he shamelessly violated
all his pledges, set at naught the Constitution of the
State, and openly encouraged the " Black " faction
to murder and rob their principal opponents. F'or
the violence of the " Black " Guelfs some excuse
may be found ; Florence was surrounded by bitter
enemies, and the honest men of the party may
really have thought that the " Whites " had been
guilty of disloyalty to the Guelf cause, or of weak-
ness in serving it, while the nobles had been ex-
asperated by special legislation directed against
their order, and could hardly be expected to forego
an opportunity of revenge. But for Charles no
shadow of justification can be pleaded ; he was
false to his commission, false to his plighted word,
false to the people who trusted him. His conduct
ranks among the meanest betrayals which history
records.

It was probably at this time that Ser Petracco
was forced to leave the city, though formal pro-
ceedings were not taken against him till many
months later, and the date of his " trial " and con-

I

6 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

demnation is October 2nd, 1302. His young wife
went with him into banishment, and they found a
refuge, together with many of their friends and
fellow-exiles, in the Ghibellin city of Arezzo, a
retreat especially convenient to Petracco, as his
hereditary property at Incisa lay on the direct
road to Florence, and only twelve miles across the
Slate boundary.

In 1303 he returned for a few weeks to Florence
as ambassador for his party. Boniface VI 11 was
dead, and Benedict XI made another attempt at
reconciling the Guelf factions. With this object he
sent as Legate to Tuscany the Cardinal Niccolo da
Prato, an honest man zealous for peace. On May
loth, 1303, the Florentines received the Cardinal
with open arms, gave him the temporary govern-
ment of the city, and elected Priors devoted to his
interests, who issued safe-conducts to the envoys of
the White Guelfs.

All promised well ; the people were earnest for
peace, the Cardinal was benevolent and sincere ;
the "White" envoys seem to have been reasonable
in their demands. But the " Black " extremists
were resolved to prevent a peace which would ruin
their supremacy in the State, and they shrank from
nothing that might serve their object. By a clever
forgery of the Cardinal's hand and seal, they per-
suaded the people that he was summoning a Ghi-
bellin army to Florence ; the negotiations were
broken off; the envoys returned to report their
failure to their friends, and the Cardinal, suspected
by every one except those who had brought him

EARLY YEARS 7

into suspicion, retired to his native Prate, and laid
the territory of Florence under an interdict.

Peaceful means having failed, the " Whites " re-
solved on an attempt to redress their grievances
by force. The Cardinal, in an evil hour for his
reputation as a statesman, encouraged them in
their design, and so played into the hands of
the " Blacks " and confirmed the bulk of the
people in their suspicions of him. Acting on his
suggestion, the exiles mustered their forces and
appeared before the walls of Florence on the
morning of July 20th, 1304. But scattered as they
had been among the cities of Tuscany and the
Emilia, concerted action was difficult and secrecy
impossible ; some of their contingents arrived too
late ; they found their enemies forewarned ; and
after some fruitless skirmishing they were forced
to retreat and disperse.

We do not know whether Petracco, who had
played so prominent a part in the peace negotia-
tions, shared the responsibility for this ill-judged
and ill-executed appeal to arms ; but he probably
shared its dangers, and if so, he was away from
home when his eldest son was born. " On Mon-
day, July 20th, 1304," Petrarch tells us in one of
his letters, " the very day on which the exiles were
beaten back from the walls of Florence, just as the
dawn began to brighten, I was born in the city of
Arezzo, in Garden Street as it Is called, with such
travail of my mother and at such peril of her life,
that not only the midwives, but even the physicians
believed for some time that she was dead." The

8 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

street still keeps its old name of Vicolo delC Orto ;
the house which first sheltered the poet of Laura
and founder of Humanism still stands, and now bears
on its walls a marble tablet inscribed with Petrarch's
name, with three passages from his writings in
which he speaks of his birthplace, and with an
attestation of the transfer of the house in i8io from
private to public ownership. The city has always
been proud of her accidental connection with
Petrarch, and he for his part was equally proud of
her as his birthplace. " Arezzo," he declared to an
Aretine friend, " has been far more generous to an
alien in blood than has Florence to her own son."
And more than four centuries after his death
Arezzo reaped a rich reward for her hospitality to
his parents, when Napoleon after Marengo, out of
reverence for the memory of Petrarch, exacted no
penalty for the stubborn resistance of the Aretines.
Intimately as his name has been associated with
that of Arezzo in the imagination of posterity, he
spent there only the first six months of his life. In
February, 1305, Eletta left Arezzo with her little
son, and went to live on Petracco's hereditary
property at Incisa. On the way the future poet
had a narrow escape ,from drowning : he was
carried "on the arm of a strong young fellow, as
Metabus carried Camilla, wrapped in a linen cloth
and slung from a knotted staff While crossing the
Arno, the young man was thrown by a stumble of
his horse, and nearly perished in the rushing stream
through his efforts to save the burden entrusted to
him." No harm came of the accident, and the

I

EARLY YEARS 9

party arrived safely at Incisa, where Petrarch was
to spend the next seven years of his life.

Somehow or other this little country estate had
escaped the decree of confiscation which deprived
Ser Petracco of the rest of his property. The
obvious theory that it belonged to Eletta's family
and not to her husband's is disproved by docu-
ments ; probably, therefore, Petracco was not its
sole owner ; he may have held it jointly with other
relatives, or it may have been settled on his wife in
return for the dowry which she brought him. What-
ever the explanation, Eletta was able to live there
unmolested, and Petracco, though banished and pro-
scribed, could easily visit her by stealth. The rulers
of a mediaeval State cared chiefly about its cities
and fortified places ; so long as there were no con-
spiracies hatching, they would not be over-active in
policing a little country village. Moreover, the
great range of the Prato Magno, at the foot of
which Incisa lies, offers many a lonely sheep-track
by which an exile might travel unsuspected, and
many a wooded nook where, sheltered by friends,
he might find a hiding-place from any casual search-
party. Petracco certainly did contrive to visit his
wife, and in 1307 their second son, Gherardo, was
born ; a third boy, who died in infancy, must have
been born much later, though the local inscriptions
at Incisa claim him too as a native of the place, for
Petrarch retained a vivid recollection of his love for
this baby-brother and of his poignant sorrow at the
child's death.

Wc have no details of the life at Incisa ; but any

lo PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

one who has lived the year through in Tuscany
can imagine them for himself, for the essential
features of Tuscan life are as little changed as the
scenery itself. You may search Europe from end
to end and find no more ideal spot than Incisa for
a poet's upbringing. It is a bright little township
on the left bank of the Arno, deriving its name from
the gorge or cutting which the river has here made
for itself through the rock. To the west are steep
round-topped hills rich with vegetation ; to the east
a lovely maze of low ridge and fertile valley Hes
between the channel of the Arno and the massive
range of the Prato Magno. Then, as now, the
corn grew between rows of pollards, mostly maple,
over which twined the stems and tendrils of the
vines ; then, as now, you might see by the summer
moonlight, after the corn was reaped, the white or
fawn - coloured oxen moving slowly between the
trees, dragging through the stubble such a plough
as that of which Cincinnatus held the stilts.
Mingled with the vineyards are groves of olives ;
above them on the slopes of the mountain grow the
chestnuts, the meal of which is a staple food of the
country-folk ; higher yet is a belt of pines and
beeches ; and above all the immense expanse of
short, crisp grass, sweet to crop and elastic to tread,
from which the range takes its name of " the Great
Meadow." The passion for Nature, which dis-
tinguishes Petrarch from his predecessors, was
surely first aroused in him by the beauty of his
childhood's home.

Nor was this his only debt to Incisa. From

I

EARLY YEARS ii

every peasant he would hear those Tuscan songs
which are distinguished above all popular poetry
by grace of imagery and refinement of diction ; his
quick, impressionable brain would receive from them
its first idea of poetic expression ; here surely was
the origin of that Italian spirit which in later years
he breathed into the courtly forms of the Provencal
lyric. A tablet marks the house, still standing on
the steep hillside amid the ruins of an ancient castle,
which tradition assigns as the home of Eletta and
her children ; another tablet of very recent erection
on the little town hall commemorates Petrarch's
connection with the place ; it is a sound instinct
which has led the composers of both inscriptions
to emphasise the fact that here the future poet's
childish lips first opened to the sweet accents of his
mother- speech.

The current of Italian politics had borne him as
a baby to Incisa ; the same stormy current swept
him out of this quiet home seven years later, and
carried him to have his first glimpse of the great
world at Pisa. Henry of Luxemburg had been
elected King of the Romans with the full consent
of Pope Clement V, if not actually at his sugges-
tion ; for the first time it seemed as if Emperor and
Pope might work heartily together to reconcile the
Italian factions. Never was man so well fitted as
Henry for this honourable task. Men said of him
that he was neither puffed up by victory nor cast
down by defeat ; among the petty intrigues of
German princes and Italian despots he walked
^serene, intent upon justice, so that he did indeed

12 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

deserve the magnificent eulogy of Dante, who as-
signed a seat in the highest heaven, in the very
Rose of the Blessed, to "the lofty Henry, who
should come to guide Italy aright before she was
ready." He failed, but his failure was more glorious
than the successes of meaner men. In the spring
of 1 31 2, however, when he marched through Lom-
bardy into Tuscany, the hopes of his friends ran
high. The Pope, though notoriously capable of
treachery, had not yet declared himself a traitor to
the Emperor of his choice, and if the Ca;5ar's
authority were backed by the Pope, Guelf and Ghi-
bellin alike might be expected to bow before it.
The prospect was still fair when Henry took up
his quarters in Pisa, a stronghold of Ghibellin-
ism loyal through all vicissitudes to its noblest
champion. Hither came Ser Petracco, with many
of his political friends, to meet the Emperor, and
hither, finding himself at last in a place of safety,
he summoned his wife and children to join him.
So it was in Pisa that the little Petrarch first beheld
the glories of a rich and artistic Italian city, at this
time the rival of Florence herself in the beauty of
her buildings. The cathedral and the baptistery
stood then as we see them to-day, only the bronze
doors and a few decorative details remaining to be
added at a later date ; the leaning tower wanted
only the topmost tier of its arches ; the cloister of
the Campo Santo was built, and the best artists of
Tuscany had begun to cover its walls with frescoes
of the rarest beauty. l!y the Arno stood the little
fishermen's chapel of the Spina, a gem in marble,

EARLY YEARS

13

finished only a year or two before, and the quays
on either side were lined with a stately row of
palaces which Venice herself could not surpass for
many a day to come. To a quick-witted child of
precocious icsthetic sense Pisa must have seemed a
city of fairyland.

He stayed about a year within her walls, till the
defeat of Henry VH quenched the last spark of
genuine Imperialist enthusiasm in Italy, Henry
had been crowned in Rome, but in other respects
his expedition ended in failure. The Pope played
him false ; Naples and Florence met him with open
and successful opposition ; and after a fruitless cam-
paign he died in August, 1313, at Buonconvento, a
little fortified town in the territory of Siena. It was
commonly believed that a priest had poisoned the
consecrated elements, but there is no evidence of foul
play, and the fatigues of an arduous campaign may
well have brought about Henry's death by natural
causes. Indeed, it is probable that many suspected
poisonings in the Middle Ages were really cases of
"something in — itis," which the medical men of the
day were incompetent to diagnose.

Henry was laid to rest in his faithful Pisa, where
I his tomb, by the master hand of Giovanni Pisano,
may still be seen ; and in his grave were buried the
last hopes of the Florentine exiles, who must now
choose between a shameful recantation and per-
petual banishment. Like Dante, Ser Petracco had
once already rejected the former alternative ; he
now decided to leave Italy altogether, and to settle
in Avignon, whither Clement V had transferred the

I

H PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Papal See four years before. So the party left
Pisa, apparently in the autumn of 1 3 1 3, and travelled
to Genoa, where they were to take ship for Mar-
seilles, Never did Petrarch forget that wonderful
journey by the foot of the Carrara Mountains and
along the Eastern Riviera. Forty years later he
recalled with rapture the memory "as of a lovely
dream, liker to a heavenly than an earthly dwelling-
place, even such as the poets celebrate when they
sing of the Elysian fields." The pleasant hill-paths,
the bright ravines, the stately towers and palaces
enchanted him ; the hillsides seemed a vast garden
of cedar, vine, and olive ; and when at length he
entered Genoa, it seemed to him " a city of Kings,
the very temple of prosperity and threshold of
gladness."

Though short, his stay in Genoa was memorable
for the formation of the earliest and one of the most
intimate of his many friendships. He met here
Guido Settimo, a boy of his own age, who was to
be his fellow at school and college, his host at
Avignon and guest at Vaucluse, and of whom he
could write fifty years later that to see Guido, then
become Archbishop of Genoa, was much the same
as to see himself, since they had lived together
from childhood in perfect harmony of disposition
and everything else.

Guide's father, like Ser Petracco, was about to
settle at Avignon ; so at Genoa the two families
took ship together for Marseilles. A southerly
winter gale nearly wrecked them outside the
harbour, but they presently got safely to land, and

EARLY YEARS 15

f journeyed up the valley of the Rhone to Avignon.
Here they found themselves in a fresh difficulty :
f "the place could barely accommodate the Roman
L Pontiff and the Church, which had lately followed
I him thither into exile, for it had in those days but a
Ismail number of houses, so that it was oversowed
[ by this deluge of visitors." The fathers, accordingly,
■ decided to establish their families in the neighbour-
ing town of Carpentras, "a little city in truth, but still
the chief place of a little province," where they found
suitable houses for themselves and a grammar school
for the education of their boys. Here Petrarch I
spent four of the happiest years of his life. For)
politicians, especially for those whose fortunes were
bound up with the Roman Curia, the times were
, troublous. Pope Clement V died in this very town
' of Carpentras, and the Conclave assembled there ;
' but the Cardinals would not come to an agreement,
and the See remained vacant for two years. All
this mattered nothing to the two boys. " You re-
member those four years," Petrarch writes to Guido
I in the letter already freely quoted; "what a delight-
ful lime it was, with perfect freedom from care, with
peace at home and liberty abroad, and with its
leisure hours spent amid the silence of the fields. I
am sure you share my feelings, and certainly I am
grateful to that season, or rather to the Author of
all seasons, who allowed me those years of absolute
calm, that undisturbed by any storm of trouble I
might drink in, so far as my poor wit allowed, the
sweet milk of boyish learning, to strengthen my
mind for digesting more solid nourishment"

i6 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

The " sweet milk of boyish learning " was ad-
ministered by Convennole of Prato, perhaps the
most celebrated schoolmaster of his day, and as
famous for the oddities of his character as for the
excellence of his teaching. He was said to have
kept a school for fully sixty years, and his renown
was justified by the number of his pupils who after-
wards attained to distinction in learning and politics
and to positions of eminence in the Church. Among
them all Petrarch was his favourite ; this was so
notorious that in after-years Cardinal Giovanni
Colonna, who delighted in the old man's simplicity
and scholarship, used to tease him by asking :
" ' Tel! me, master, among all your distinguished
pupils, whom you love, as I know, is there any
room in your heart for our Francesco?' And there-
upon the old man's tears would rise so that he
would either be silent, or sometimes go away, or, if
he was able to speak, he would swear by everything
sacred that he loved none of them all so well."
There is good reason to think that he had been
Petrarch's tutor in Italy, and that he accompanied
the family to Avignon and Carpeiitras ; at all events,
he transferred his school thither, and there Petrarch
advanced under his tuition from childish lessons to
profounder studies in Latin grammar and litera-
ture, in rhetoric and in dialectic. The last that we
hear of Convennole is a tragi-comic episode which
resulted in a serious literary loss. In his old age
he fell into great poverty, and Ser Petracco helped
him liberally with money ; after the latter 's death
he relied wholly on Petrarch, who gave him money

J

EARLY YEARS

17

when he could, ami when he had none, as was
often the case, procured him loans from richer
friends, or lent him something to pawn. One day
the old man's distress got the better of his honesty.
He borrowed two works of Cicero, the unique MS,
of the De Gloria and The Laws, together with some
other books, ostensibly for hterary work of his own,
" for not a day passed without his planning out
some work with a high-sounding title, and writing a
preface for it, after which his fickle fancy would
straightway fly off to some totally different matter."
Presently his delay in returning the books led
Petrarch to suspect the truth, and he found that

IConvennoIe had pawned them. He would have
redeemed them himself, and begged to be told the
pawnbroker's name ; but the old man in an agony
of shame protested that he would do his duty, and
begged for time to redeem his honour. Petrarch
would insist no further ; but Convennole's neces-
sities presently obliged him to return to Tuscany,
where he soon afterwards died, and Petrarch, who
was then at Vaucluse, heard nothing of his de-
parture till the people of Prato sent to ask him to
write his epitaph. In spite of every effort, he could
never find a trace of his missing Cicero ; " and so,"
he says, " 1 lost my books and my tutor at the
same time." Of Tke Laws, other copies were pre-
served, but the De Gloria has been a lost book
from that day.

It was while still a schoolboy at Carpentras, and
probably very early in his stay there, that Petrarch
t saw Vaucluse, the place which was afterwards

i8 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

to be more closely associated with his name than any
of his residences. Ser Petracco one day brought
home Guido Settimo's uncle as his guest, and he,
being a stranger to the neighbourhood, was anxious
to see the celebrated source of the Sorgue. The two
boys begged to be allowed to share the excursion,
and as they were too small to ride on horseback alone,
they were mounted each in front of a servant, and in
this fashion Eletta, "the best of all mothers that ever
I knew," as Petrarch calls her, who loved the little
Guido almost as well as her own boys, was content
to let them go. "And when we arrived at the
source of the Sorgue," Petrarch continues, "I re-
member as though it had happened to-day how I was
moved by the strange beauty of the spot, and how
1 spoke my boyish thoughts to myself as well as I
could to this effect : Here is the place which best
suits with my temper, and which, if ever I have the
chance, I will prefer before great cities."

After four happy years at Carpentras the troubles
of Petrarch's life began, when his father sent him
to study law at the High School of Montpeliier.
Petrarch, now in his seventeenth year and a boy
of precocious talent, already felt that literature was
his vocation, and hitherto his father, a sound scholar
with a finer literary judgment than most scholars
of the day, had encouraged him in his tastes.
" From my boyhood," he tells us, "at the age when
others are gaping over Prosper and >Esop, I buckled
to the books of Cicero, impelled both by natural
instinct and by the advice of my father, who pro-
fessed deep veneration for that author, and who

EARLY YEARS 19

would easily have gained distinction as a man of
letters if his splendid talent had not been diverted by
the necessity of providing for his family. ... At
that time I could not understand what I read, but
the sweetness of the language and majesty of the
cadences enchanted me, so that whatever else I
read or heard sounded harsh in my ears and quite
discordant. . . . And this daily increasing ardour
of mine was favoured by my father's admiration and
the sympathy which he showed for awhile with my
boyish study." Presently, however, Ser Petracco
changed his tone; his means had been seriously im-
paired by his political misfortunes ; his son must
begin to think of a profession at which money could
be earned ; what more natural than that he should
destine his brilliant boy for the traditional calling of
the family, in which he himself had won so consider-
able a reputation? It was well enough to unbend
the mind over the masterpieces of antiquity, but the
study of them must not interfere with the serious
business of life, and he began to bid the lad "forget
Cicero and set himself to the study of the laws of
borrowing and lending, of wills and their codicils,
of property in land and property in houses." One
day, finding that the young scholar could not be
persuaded to divorce himself from his classics,
Petracco took sterner measures. "I had got to-
gether," says Petrarch, "all the works of Cicero'
that I could find, and had hidden them carefully
away for fear of the very thing that actually hap-
pened, when one day my father fished them out
and threw them into the fire before my very eyes.

20 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

to burn like the books of the heretics. At this
I set up as terrible a howling as if 1 myself had
been thrown upon the logs, whereupon my father,
beholding my sorrow, plucked out two of the books
just as the flames were on the point of reaching
them, and holding Virgil in his right hand and
Cicero's Rhetoric in his left, gave them with a
smile, as an offering to my tears, saying, ' Keep
the one for an occasional hour of recreation, and
the other as a stimulus to your study of civil law.'"

Petrarch was a dutiful son, and for seven years
applied himself diligendy to the studies marked out
for him by his father, and gave promise of great
proficiency in them ; but all the time his heart was
elsewhere, and to the end of his life he regarded
this period of legal study as " rather wasted than
spent." Probably he underrated the benefit of it ;
an eager, fervent temper such as his needs discipline
as well as instruction, and it may be that the steady
grind at an uncongenial subject did much to develop
his indefatigable industry, and to enable him to get
the best results out of his genius when he came to
apply it to the things for which he really cared.

At all events, he was happy at Montpellier, in
spite of distasteful studies. The place was then "a
most flourishing town, the sovereignty of which
was vested in the King of Majorca with the excep-
tion of one corner belonging to the King of France,
who . . . soon afterwards managed to get posses-
sion of all the rest. And what a peaceful calm pre-
vailed there at that time, what wealth its merchants
enjoyed, how full of scholars were the streets, and

EARLY YEARS 21

what a number of masters taught in the school ! "
Above all, he still had Guido Settimo for his com-
panion during the whole four years that he spent
there ; for Guido too was ordered to study the law,
and was happier than his friend in finding it con-
genial to his tastes and disposition.

Early in 1323 the two friends went to finish
their legal training at Bologna, whither Petrarch's
younger brother, Gherardo, either accompanied or
soon afterwards followed them. No young man
could be better qualified than Petrarch to enjoy the
pleasures and interests of university life ; with an
insatiable appetite for literature he combined a
capacity for friendship which assured him of the
full benefit of the social life of the place. In
Bologna, the premier University of Italy, he found
charming surroundings and pleasant companions, so
that "nowhere was life freer or more delightful,"
and his residence there seemed "not the least of
the benefits which God had given him." Only the
educational methods of the day seemed to him
radically wrong. " Philosophy," he protests, " is so
prostituted to the fancies of the vulgar, that it aims
only at hair-splitting on subtle distinctions and
quibbles of words. . . . Truth is utterly lost sight
of, sound practice is neglected, and the reality of
things is despised. . . . People concentrate their
whole attention on empty words."

For himself, he continued " to bend beneath
the weight of legal study " during the whole of his
residence at Bologna, his tutor being the Canonist
Giovanni Andrea, the most celebrated lawyer of the

22 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

time, "a chief glory of the city and University,"
where he held the Chair of Canon Law for forty-
five years. Unhappily he was not satisfied with
being first in his own profession, but assumed the
airs of a dictator in literature and criticism too, a
pose in which his ignorance and arrogance at
once amazed and disgusted his more cultivated
pupils. Yet tutor and pupil must have been on
good terms on the whole, for they made an expedi-
tion together to Venice for the mere pleasure of
seeing the place, and may probably have included
visits to Pesaro and the country round Rimini in
the same tour.

Petrarch appears to have had no other tutor while
at Bologna, for the old tradition, which made him
the pupil of Cino da Pistoia there, is certainly
erroneous. The two poets admired each other ;
they exchanged poems during Cino's lifetime, and
Petrarch wrote the beautiful sonnet Piangete, Donne
as a lament for his death. Moreover, the young
poet's genius was influenced for good by his study
of the elder's art, and in this sense only he may be
called a pupil of Cino. The latter was probably
absent from Bologna during the whole of Petrarch's
residence there.

The study of law and the companionship of his
tutor were far from monopolising Petrarch's time
at the University. His leisure hours were devoted
to literature and to rambles round the city in com-
pany with his friends. One of these was a young
poet, Tommaso Caloria of Messina, with whom
Petrarch soon formed one of those close and ardent

I

I

EARLY YEARS 23

friendships the record of which is the most delight-
ful feature of his biography. Their tastes were con-
genial, their talents similar in kind if not in degree,
and Petrarch thought so highly of Tommaso's
genius as to name him among the poets in the
Triumph of Love. Something of this high estimate
may have been due to the partiality of friendship,
but Petrarch's critical instinct was not easily misled
even by the fervour of his affections.

With Tommaso, Guldo, and other friends, Pet-
rarch spent many a hoUday in rambles through the
delightful country of the Emilia which lies round
Bologna. "I used to go with those of my own
age," he says, " and on festal days we would wander
to a great distance, so that the sun often set while
we were still in the country, and we did not get
back till the dead of night. But the city gates
stood open, or if by any chance they had been
shut, there was no wall to the town, but only a
brittle paling half rotten by age ... so that you
could approach it from numberless points, and each
of us could make entry where it suited his con-
venience," We are accustomed to think of the
fourteenth century as a turbulent age. when might
was right, and a city's safety lay in the strength of
her walls and the courage of her people. It is a
little surprising, therefore, to read of this free, joyous
student life, and still more so to hear of a rotten
paling as the only rampart of an Italian town.

Before Petrarch had quite completed his twenty-
second year, he and Gherardo were summoned
home by the news of their father's death ; they left

24

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Bologna on April 36th, 1326. and travelled with all
speed to Avignon. Ser Petracco was not quite
sixty years old. and his death must have come with
the shock of a surprise to the family, for his health
had been good, and so little had he felt the weight
of years, that he threw the whole household into
commotion in his indignation at finding the first
white hair on his head when more than fifty years
of age. This is the single humorous anecdote of
him that has come down to us ; for the rest he
seems to have been an austere man, who failed to
win the full confidence of his children, though he
always commanded their deep respect. He had
lived a hard life, which may well have deadened his
sensibilities, and, after all, he was not more despotic
than most parents, who claim to mould their
children's lives without taking due account of
peculiarities in their temperament. Intellectually he
had much in common with his greater son, though
he lacked the latter's delicate fancy and creative
genius; morally the father was probably the stronger
man of the two, but in the strength of his character
there was an element of harshness, and the more
finely strung nature of the son, with his keenness of
human sympathy and his enthusiasm for noble
ideals, appeals more successfully to the imagination
and affection of mankind.

A still keener sorrow was in store for the brothers.
Eletta, according to the received tradition, which is
probably correct, died only a few weeks after her
husband. Though Petrarch mentions her very
seldom in his extant writings, there is enough to

A

EARLY YEARS 25

;pth and enthusiasm of his love for her.
His allusion to her as " the best of all mothers that
ever he knew " has been already quoted, and the
Latin poem in which he laments her death over-
flows with tenderness. He calls her

Elect of God no less in deed than name ;
Speaks of her as possessing

Nobility to wake the Muses' choir,

Supreme affection, majesty of soul ;

^ and declares that

The good will aye revere thee ; I must weep
Thy loss for aye I Not verily that Death
Brings aught of terrible to thee, we grieve ;
But that thou, sweetest mother, leavest us.
Me and my brother, wearied, where the ways
Of Life divide, midst of a stormy world.

Throughout his Hfe her memory remained fresh in
his heart, and when a little granddaughter was born
10 him in his old age, he had the child christened
by the cherished name of Eletta.

CHAPTER II

AVIGNON AND LAURA
1326-1339

SER PETRACCO had done much to retrieve
his fortune ; two years previously he had been
able to provide a suitable dowry for his natural
daughter Selvaggia on her marriage with a gentle-
man of Florence, and at his death he left a sub-
stantial amount of property. But not a penny of
this inheritance ever reached its lawful owners ;
the executors contrived to convey it all to their
own uses. " The plague of faithless guardians,"
Petrarch wrote many years afterwards to his brother,
"pursued us from our boyhood. Thanks to our
bad luck or our simplicity, we seemed a couple of
solitary lads not given to making close scrutiny and
easy to fleece. 'Tis an old truism that opportunity
makes the thief; and this opportunity made us
poor instead of rich, or rather — let us recognise the
bounty of God — it made us men of leisure instead
of men of affairs, unburdened instead of heavily
laden." The only fragment of his inheritance that
Petrarch ever received was "a volume of Cicero so
exquisite that you could hardly find its equal, which
my father used to cherish as his darling treasure,
and which escaped the hands of his executors not

AVIGNON AND LAURA

27

because they wished to save it for me, but because

they were busy plundering what they considered

the more valuable portions of my inheritance."

Unhappily this beautiful MS. was pawned together

with the Dc Gloria by old Convennole, and so

Petrarch lost the last vestige of his father's property.

I Being now his own master, he determined to be

not a lawyer, but a scholar and a poet. He made

his choice deliberately, and he never regretted it ;

his instinct told him truly that the advancement of

learning was his vocation, and never was any man's

choice of work more fully justified by the event. It

is hardly possible to exaggerate the effect of that

\ choice on the revival of learning in Europe.

P But a scholar in the early fourteenth century 1

could not live by his pen. At Florence and Bologna ,

the men of letters were mostly lawyers ; elsewhere,

and especially at the Papal Court, they were nearly

I always Churchmen. Petrarch's course was obvious ;

Ihe immediately took the minor orders, which were

sufficient to give him a locus standi and hopes of

preferment in the Church without fettering his

liberty of action, but he delayed till long afterwards

his ordination as priest, which was a far graver

matter, and might possibly have hindered rather

r than helped him in his early career. It has some-]

I times been urged as a reproach against him that he '

f entered the Church without any vocation to the

' ministry ; and his defenders have replied that in so I

' doing he only followed the custom of the age, that

Lthe minor orders imply no stringent obligation and

■require no special vocation, and that in spite of

28 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

occasional human frailties he was one of the most
devout-minded men of his time, with strong re-
ligious tendencies even in the early youth which he
spent, to use his own words, " in subjection to his
vanities." All these answers are valid, but to say
the truth they are all superfluous. The Church of
the Middle Ages took thought for men's intellects
as well as for their souls ; she was organised for
mental culture as well as for spiritual devotion ; and
the scholar found his natural place in her ranks side
by side with the preacher and the theologian.

Circumstances equally dictated his choice of
a residence. He hated Avignon : he declaims
with quite comic vehemence against its very soil
and climate, calling it " the melancholy Avignon,
built upon a rugged rock, on the banks of the
windiest of rivers." Much more violent are his
denunciations of its politics and its morals. Avig-
non, as the seat of the Papal Court, was treasonably
usurping the sovereign rights of Rome ; she was
the Babylon of a captivity worse than the Jewish,
because voluntary and base; Babylon is his habitual
name for her, and under this opprobrious nickname
he denounces alike the perfidy of her rulers and the
wickedness of her inhabitants. And the society in
which the gay licence of Provence met the darker
corruptions of an unscrupulous priesthood furnished
only too much matter for his diatribes. Yet no-
where else could he think of establishing himself.
His father had formed influential connections at the
Papal Court, and he himself was beginning to be
known in the city; in no other place could a brilliant

J

AVIGNON AND LAURA

29

I

young Churchman begin his career with such hope
of speedy preferment ; most important of all, the
intellectual opportunities and interests of Avignon
were unrivalled in Europe. That it was the native
home of the Proven9al school of poetry, which had
reached its zenith more than a century before, was
the least of its merits. As the seat of the Papacy
it was a cosmopolitan city, the centre of European
politics, the goal of envoys from every court, of
scholars from every university, and the resort of the
greatest artists in Italy, summoned thither to decorate
the palace of the Popes. It was here that Petrarch
met his friend Simone Martini, commonly called
Memmi, of Siena, who is said to have painted the
beautiful portraits of him and Laura preserved in
the Laurentian Library at Florence, and to have
introduced portraits of them into his great fresco in
the Spaniards' Chapel there. The latter portraits,
if really the work of Martini, which is doubtful,
must have been painted from memory, for Petrarch
was never in Florence during the painting of this
fresco, and Laura was never there at all ; and they
show much less individuality of feature and expres-
sion than the former pair. The Laurentian por-
trait of l^ura may possibly have been the one
which Petrarch commissioned Memmi to paint for
him, and for which he thanked him in two sonnets
couched in terms of warm affection and high
esteem.

This society of artists, scholars, statesmen, and |
men of the world was an ideal environment for a I
young man eager to acquire and diffuse knowledge, |

30 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

eager also for personal renown; and the astonishing
speed with which Petrarch's celebrity as a poet
spread through Europe must have been mainly due
to the men of all countries who learned to appreciate
him at Avignon. He himself admitted that no-
where else, as things stood, could he have found
such opportunities as were open to him at Avignon;
only he held that things ought to have been other-
wise, and these opportunities should have been
open to him not at Avignon, but in Rome.

However great may have been his disgust at the
fouler corruptions of Avignonese society, he took
his full share of its pleasures and gaieties. He was
at this time a young man of engaging appearance,
comely if not strikingly handsome, with a high
colour and a complexion rather fair than dark ; his
eyes were animated in expression and remarkably
keen of sight — in the Laurentian library portrait
they are rather small, but very clear and beautiful —
he was of middle height, and his limbs, though not
very strong, were well knit and agile. In early
and middle life his health was robust, and he was
extremely temperate in his habits, "drinking noth-
ing but water throughout his childhood and down
to the close of the period of youth." From the
Laurentian portrait we see further that he had an
intellectual face, with a rather low but very massive
forehead, a large, straight nose, delicately arched
eyebrows, high and wdl*modelled cheekbones, and
a beautiful mouth with lips that shut at once firmly
and smilingly. By the time that he sat for this
picture his chin had grown double, but still kept the

J

AVIGNON AND LAURA

3'

I

appearance of having^ been finely cut in younger
days. He was well qualified for the part of a
dandy, and played it with his brother's support to
rOdmiration. " You remember," he writes twenty
[years later, "the quite superfluous gloss of our
exquisite raiment, and our daintiness in putting it
on and off, a troublesome business which we per-
formed morning and evening ; you remember too
our terror lest a single hair should get out of place,
or a breath of wind ruffle the arrangement of our
curls, and how we swerved from every horse that
met or passed us, lest a speck of dust should mar
the shine of our scented cloaks, or a touch should
disarrange the folds in which we had laid them.
. . . And what shall I say of our shoes ? What a
cruel, unremitting warfare they waged with our feet,
which they were supposed to protect ! They would
soon have made mine quite useless, if I had not
taken warning by the straits to which I was pushed,
and preferred giving a little offence to other folk's
eyes before crushing my own muscles and joints.
And what of our curling-tongs and the dressing of
our hair? How often the toil of it delayed our
sleep at night and cut it short in the morning!
Could any pirate have tortured us more cruelly than
we tortured ourselves by twisting cords round our
heads? We twisted them so tight indeed at night,
that in the morning our mirror showed us crimson
furrows across our foreheads, and in our anxiety to
show off our hair we had to make it hide our

But though he ruffled it with the best of the

32 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

dandies, so that all Avignon pointed him out as a
model of elegance, he never allowed frivolity in
distract him from scholarship. He was bent on
acquiring knowledge, and he found friends, some of
them much older than himself, who were able and
willing to help him. One of them was Giovanni
of Florence, one of the Pope's writers, an old man
well qualified by character, learning, and experience
to be an adviser of youth. To him Petrarch con-
fided his hopes and his difficulties, and in return the
old man spoke to him of the true method and right
aim of study, bidding him not to be cast down by
an apparent check in his pursuit of learning, seeing
that the recognition of our ignorance is the first
step to knowledge. In the last year of his life
Petrarch was asked to advise a young man who
feared that he had come to a standstill in his work,
and answered that he could do no better than repeat
to him the counsel which he had himself received
from Giovanni of Florence.

Another friend by whose affectionate help and
advice he profited much was the lawyer Raimondo
Soranzio, "a venerable and noble old man," who
gloriously sacrificed all hope of preferment by with-
standing the Pope himself in a good cause. He
possessed a fine library of the classics, though he
himself cared little about any of them except Livy,
and he generously allowed Petrarch the free use of
his books ; indeed, it was he who lent him the De
Gloria, of which the melancholy history has already
been told.

So far Petrarch's life had been a happy one ; he

AVIGNON AND LAURA

33

I

had met with misfortunes, it is true, but they were
not of such a kind as could daunt a high-spirited
youth, and many an ambitious young man of letters
would gladly compound for them all on condition
of having Petrarch's advantages. But now, in
the twenty-third year of his age and less than a
year after his return to Avignon, the great crisis of '
Jiis life came upon him, bringing him twenty-one
years of deep unhappiness, hardly compensated by
the enduring renown which was its fruit. On
the 6th April, 1327, at the hour of Prime, he first
saw Laura in the Church of St. Claire, and was
overwhelmed at once with the love of which he
tells us: "In my youth I bore the stress of a
passion most violent, though honourable and the
single one of my life ; and I should have borne it
even longer than I did, had not Death, opportune
in spite of its bitterness, quenched the flame just as
it was beginning to grow less intense." It is to the
vicissitudes of this deep and enduring passion that
we owe the poems by which their author holds his
high rank among the masters of song.

Who was Laura? Frankly, we do not know.
In all probability Petrarch purposely destroyed all
marks of identification ; if this was his intention,
his success was complete, and the riddle will prob-
ably never be answered with certainty. So careful
was the lover to guard his lady's secret, that even
in his lifetime his friends would tease him by pre-
tending to believe that he was in love with no
woman at all, but only with the laurel crown of
poetry, which he symbolised under the name of

34 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Laura; and this allegorical theory has never been
quite without adherents. Happily no reasonable
person, acquainted with all the evidence and with
Petrarch's methods of thought and expression, can
doubt its falsity. That in answer to a friend's
banter he protested the reality of his passion counts
for little ; of course he would have done that
whether he were maintaining; a fact or a fiction.
But the manner of his protestation, with its revela-
tion of a spirit vexed by fluctuating emotions and
conflicting desires, carries conviction. Much more
conclusive, however, indeed absolutely conclusive,
are the references to Laura in his Dialogues De
Contemptu Mundi, and the two pathetic entries on
the fly-leaf of his Virgil. The Dialogues, which he
called his Secretum, were written for himself alone;
under the form of a dialogue with Saint Augustine
they constitute a private record of his inmost
thoughts and feelings. He never published them ;
it is doubtful whether even his most intimate friends
were ever allowed to read them ; their very exist-
ence was certainly unknown till after his death to
the great body of his admirers. Yet it is precisely
in this private record that we find the most valu-
able information as to his love for Laura and its
effect on his character and his work. And on the
fly-leaf of his Virgil, the book which he carried
everywhere with him, now preserved in the Am-
brosian Library at Milan, he noted down, again for
his own eye only, among the most solemn events
of his life, the dates of his first meeting with Laura
and of her death. This is conclusive ; for on no

i

AVIGNON AND LAURA

35

conceivable theory can Petrarch, writing for himself
only, have set down the date of Laura's death in 1 348,
if she was but the symbol of his laurel crown, which
he gained in 1341, and which showed no sign of
fading during his lifetime. But if the support of
circumstantial evidence is wanted, there is plenty to
be had. The Canzoniere, for instance, describes
in minutest detail every feature of the beloved
lady's face except her nose ; it is hard to imagine a
poet spending so much pains on the unsubstantial
features of an allegorical picture ; it is quite incon-
ceivable that, describing all the rest, he should
forget the most prominent of them all ; had Laura
been a mere allegory, we should have had either no
portrait or a complete one. Nor is it conceivable
that Petrarch would have spoken of a fictitious
passion in the terms of strong abhorrence which,
under occasional impulses of ascetic fervour, he
applied to his earthly love. The strength of a
reaction is a sure gauge of the strength of the action
which preceded it, and the intemperate fervour of
Petrarch the ascetic bears witness to the intensity
of the emotions of Petrarch the lover and the poet.
Laura was a real woman, and Petrarch was
desperately her lover ; so much may safely be as-
serted, so much and no more. We do not even
know that her real name was Laura ; here may well
be the grain of truth from which the whole alle-
gorical myth sprung ; nothing is more likely than
that Petrarch, who constantly gave nicknames of
affection to his friends, should have called the lady
whom he loved by a name that associated her in his

36

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

fancy and in the ears of the world with his life's
ambition. Was she married or single ? Again we
do not know. The received opinion follows the
conjecture of the Abbd de Sade, and identifies her
with his ancestress, Laura de Noves, wife of Count
Hugo de Sade, a nobleman of Avignon. But the
evidence for her marriage rests mainly on a question-
able interpretation of a single Latin contraction,
while the general tone of the Canzoniere supports
the theory that she was unmarried. If this
was the case, Petrarch may well have called his
love for her an "honourable" passion, not merely
in the sense in which Provencal courts of love
adjudged honourable the devotion of a troubadour
to his lady, but in the more modern and domestic
sense that he hoped to win her in marriage ; for
a dispensation from the minor orders could easily
be obtained, though the story of Pope Clement VI
having offered him a dispensation from priest's
orders must be dismissed as an idle tale.

Another theory, much in vogue just now, repre-
sents her as a simple village maiden, possibly of
gentle birth and able to read the Italian poems of
her lover, but innocent of the turmoil of city society,
living and dying at the foot of a hill a few miles out
of Vaucluse, and buried within the precincts of the
valley. It is a pretty theory; unfortunately it
raises more difficulties than it solves, and contra-
dicts more facts than it explains. The riddle is still
unread.

Whoever she was, there is no exaggerating the
effects of her influence on her lover. His love for

A

AVIGNON AND LAURA

37

her \

I

was the critical experience ol his lite, and under
its stimulus his whole nature leaped into fuller and
more vigorous life. Laura gave him little encour-
agement and no hope that she would ever return
his love ; great was his joy when he received so
much as a smile or a kindly glance from her whose
perfections he was making celebrated through the
length and breadth of Europe. Once, when he so
far presumed upon her mood of unwonted kindliness
as to talk to her openly of love, she bade him know
that she was not such an one as he seemed to think
her. Her coldness purified his passion; in spite of
himself he revered a chastity so uncommon in the
society in which he lived. He suffered, but his
moral nature gained strength and elevation from
the suffering. "Through love of her," he wrote in
his Secretum, " I attained to love of God " ; and
again, " It is to her that I owe what little merit you
see in me, and I should never have gained such
name and fame as I have, save for the nobility of
feeling with which she cultivated the sparse seeds
of virtue planted by nature in my breast. It was
she who reclaimed my youthful spirit from all base-
ness."

No less remarkable was the quickening of his
intellectual powers. He had been "devoted to the
study of poetry long before he saw Laura," and his
earlier verses had won him no little repute among
men of taste and learning. Yet of \S\gsc. Juvenilia
he has allowed not a line to come down to us. He
coveted high renown ; he wished to live by his best
work alone ; and when at a later date he came to

38 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

arrange his papers for eventual publication, he care-
fully destroyed everything which his maturcr judg-
ment pronounced incapable of sustaining his reputa-
tion. He then threw into the fire " a thousand or
more letters and poems," among which, as de Sade
ingeniously conjectures, were probably included all
the letters containing references to Laura and to
the incidents of his intercourse with her ; and the
earlier Italian poems doubdess formed part of the
same literary holocaust. These must have had
considerable merits, for no mere rubbish could have
obtained a vogue in such a society as that of Avig-
non ; but we may be sure that Petrarch would not
have destroyed them if they had been on a level
with his later work. It is safe to conclude that, till
his meeting with Laura, he had shown little more
than the promise of poetical excellence. Now, how-
ever, under the stimulus of love, he suddenly leaped
to eminence as one of the master poets of the
world. Two characteristics especially distinguish
the Canzonierc from the work of other poets : the
uniform excellence of its workmanship, and the
minuteness with which it portrays the subtlest
phases of emotion. The four parts of which it is
composed differ widely in tone and feeling ; in-
dividual poems in each part differ equally widely in
the interest of their subject-matter ; but in beauty
of form, in delicacy of expression, in perfection of
melody, there is no distinction between its earlier
and later poems ; the earliest-written sonnet of the
series — the sonnet numbered XVI in the ordinary
editions — is, technically speaking, a model which no

AVIGNON AND LAURA

39

writer of sonnets has suqiassed. Partly this uni-
formity of skill must have been due to subsequent
polishing, for Petrarch had the habit of keeping his
works by him and constantly making alterations
and improvements in them ; but it is only work of
fine quality which can be brought to perfection by
revision, and Petrarch's sudden leap to excellence
must have been mainly due to the influence of his
love.

Even more remarkable is the other distinguishing
characteristic of the Cansoniere. Petrarch has been
well called "the poet of the heart of man " ; human
sentiment is his theme, and from the abundance of
his own experience he draws the picture of all its
phases. When he writes of the external world, he
deals in generalities, for its aspects are matters of
secondary interest to him ; it is on the delineation
of feeling, from the fervour of indomitable passion
to the airiest trick of graceful fancy, that he lavishes
his unrivalled powers of analysis and expression.

It is not possible within the limits of a short
biography to attempt either a detailed criticism of
the Canzoniere, or a minute estimate of the in-
fluences which helped to fashion it, and of its own
influence on the development of European litera-
ture. Briefly it may be said that, while in matters
of form and phrase Petrarch's debt to the Pro-
vencals is great, the temper and spirit of the poems
are entirely Italian. The "courdy" forms of Pro-
vencal lyric lay ready to his hand ; so did a stock of
phrases which for three centuries had been the
common property of poets. Of these he availed

40 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

himself so freely that critics to whom form seems
the all-important thing in literature may with some
justification go near to accuse him of plagiarism.
But those who judge poetry by its spirit will rightly
maintain that the Canzoniere breathes of Italy.
Cino's influence counted for more in the making
of it than that of all Provence ; yet even Cino and
the Tuscans did not contribute very much to its
essential character. It is the mirror of its author's
soul, and that soul was Italian.

This intensely personal character of the Can-
zoniere explains its failure as a model. Itself
perhaps the most exquisite book of poetry ever
published, it gave rise to one of the feeblest and
most tedious schools of verse that have afflicted
the world. The Petrarchists could imitate their
master's tricks of diction and refine wearisomely
upon his "conceits"; but they could not catch his
spirit, and the breath of life was not in them,

A brief description of the scheme and contents
of the Canzoniere may be of service to those who
wish to make closer acquaintance with it. The
collection, as set in order by Petrarch himself, con-
sists of four parts: (i) Sonnets and Songs during
the life of Madonna Laura ; (2) Sonnets and Songs
after her death; (3) Triumphs "in vita ed in
morte" ; and (4) Poems on various occasions. The
contents of Parts I and 1 1 are sufficiently described
by their titles. Part I consists of 207 sonnets, 17
odes, 8 "sestine," 6 "ballate," and 4 madrigals, in
all 242 poems, composed between the 6th April,
1327, the day on which Petrarch first saw Laura,

AVIGNON AND LAURA

41

I
I

and the 6th April, 1348, the day of her death.
Part 11 is much shorter; it contains 90 sonnets,
8 odes, I "sestina," and i " ballata," exactly 100
poems in all, composed after Laura's death, and
probably before 1361, the third critical date in
Petrarch's life, after which he seems to have written
little, if any, Italian poetry. Part III contains the
Triumphs^ of which the scope and object are well
set forth by Marsand as follow : " The poet's aim
in composing these Triumphs is the same which he
proposed to himself in the Cansoniere, namely, to
return in thought from time to time now to the
beginning, now to the progress, and now to the
end of his passion, taking by the way frequent
opportunities of rendering praise and honour to the
single and exalted object of his love. To reach
this aim he devised a description of man in his
various conditions of life, wherein he might natur-
ally find occasion to speak of himself and of his
Laura. Man in his first stage of youth is the slave
of appetites, which may all be included under the
generic name of Love or Self-Love. But as he
gains understanding, he sees the impropriety of
such a condition, so that he strives advisedly against
those appetites and overcomes them by means of
Ckastiiy, that is, by denying himself the opportunity
of satisfying them. Amid these struggles and
victories Death overtakes him, and makes victors
and vanquished equal by taking them all out of the
world. Nevertheless, it has no power to destroy
the memory of a man, who by illustrious and
honourable deeds seeks to survive his own death.

42 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Such a man truly lives through a long course of
ages by means of his Fame. But Time at length
obliterates all memory of him, and he finds in the
last resort that his only sure hope of living for ever
is by joy in God, and by partaking with God in His
blessed Eternity. Thus Love triumphs over Man,
Chastity over Love, and Death over both alike ;
Fame triumphs over Death, Time over Fame, and
Eternity over Time."

Part IV consists of twenty sonnets and four odes
written on various occasions, mostly of public in-
terest, and contains some of the noblest passages
ever inspired in the soul of a poet by the fervour of
idealistic patriotism. Many of these will be noticed
in connection with the events to which they refer ;
here it is enough to say that if every other scrap of
Petrarch's work had perished, the odes Spirto Gentil
and Italia Mia would of themselves establish his
claim to rank with the greatest masters of lyric
song.

CHAPTER III

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP

I

WE have no record of the two years following
the first meeting with Laura ; they were
probably spent in Avignon, and we may confidently
.ascribe to them the earliest of the extant poems.
But not even love and poetry could distract Pet-
rarch from scholarship, and in the summer of 1329
he undertook the first of many journeys in which
he combined the delights of travel and sight-seeing
with a diligent hunt for forgotten manuscripts of
the classics. This passion for travel for the love 1
of sight-seeing Is one of the many minor traits in
Petrarch's character which mark him as belonging 1
rather to the modern than the mediieval age ; !
throughout the Middle Ages men travelled far and
wide on errands of war, of diplomacy, of commerce,
and of religion; but Petrarch may fairly be called |[
the first of the tourists. Still keener was his passion H
for book-hunting, and the two went well together.
" Whenever I took a far journey," he tells us, " I
would turn aside to any old monasteries that I
chanced to see in the distance, saying; 'Who knows
whether some scrap of the writings I covet may
not lie here ? ' Thus about the twenty-fifth year of

44 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

my age, in the course of a hurried journey among
the Belgians and Swiss, I came to Li^ge, and hear-
ing that there was a good quantity of books there,
I stayed and detained my companions while I
copied out one of Cicero's speeches with my own
hand and another by the hand of a friend, which
I afterwards published throughout Italy. And to
give you a laugh, I may tell you that in this fine
barbaric city it was a hard matter to find a drop of
ink, and what we did get was exactly the colour of
saffron."

Meanwhile stirring events had happened in Italy.
Lewis of Bavaria, elected King of the Romans, had
invaded the land, and he had been crowned Emperor
in Rome, first by the Bishops of Venice and EUera,
and then again by an Anti-Pope whom he had set
up in the Chair of St. Peter. As the death of
Henry VII quenched the last spark of genuine
Ghibellin sentiment in Italy, so the expedition of
"the Bavarian," as the old chroniclers call him in
scorn and hatred, marks the acknowledged end of
the old divisions. From the day when Ghibellin
Pisa and Milan had once acted in concert if not in
alliance with Guelfic Florence and Angevin Naples
to oppose the invader, the old names had become
mere badges, still worn perhaps for custom and
tradition's sake, but seen of all men to be empty of
significance. The old rivalries were still too keen,
the old feuds too bitter, to permit of lasting union ;
the ancient enmities broke out afresh as soon as the
Bavarian had recrossed the Alps. But their mere
suspension marks a new phase of national feeling.

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP

45

I

When Milan and Florence had engaged in hostili-
ties against a common enemy, and that enemy a
foreigner, Italian unity had ceased to be a mere
dream. Its realisation might be the work of cen-
turies, but it had at least become a possible aspira-
tion of practical politicians.

Prominent among the Ghibellin families who now
rallied to the Papacy was the Roman House of
Colonna, and it was a young Churchman of this
House who accomplished an act of daring which
placed Pope John XXII deep in his debt. To the
pretensions of Lewis and his Anti-Pope John replied
by a Bull of Excommunication against them both ;
this Bull, if it was to produce its full dramatic effect,
must be openly published in Rome itself; yet its publi-
cation was no easy matter, for the Bavarian held the
city, and a troublesome Papalist ran no small risk of
his life. The risk was accepted by Giacomo Colonna,
youngest son of old Stefano, the head of the House,
who, accompanied by four masked companions,
publicly read the Bull of Excommunication and
nailed it to the door of the Church of San Marcello.
This was the signal for a popular outbreak, which
presently forced the Emperor to quit Rome and
begin the retreat which ended in his expulsion
from Italy. So conspicuous a service merited a
signal reward, and Giacomo, though under the
canonical age, received the bishopric of Lombez,
a village near the source of the Garonne at the foot
of the Pyrenees.

Two years later, in the summer of 1330, the
young Bishop went to take possession of his see,

46 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

and with him went Petrarch, whom he had known
by sight only as a fellow-student at Bologna. It
was after his Roman adventure that he sought
Petrarch out and began an acquaintance which
soon ripened into a devoted friendship.

To the sojourn at Lombez Petrarch ever after-
wards looked back as one of the most deHghtful
episodes in his life, "a summer of almost heavenly
, bliss," of which the mere remembrance made him
I happy. His devotion to his patron was deep and sin-
cere; Giacomo's brilliant wit and sound learning were
doubly attractive in a man who, though a priest,
had shown the qualities of a soldier and a courtier ;
the delicacy of his nature made the name "patron"
synonymous with "friend," and with this charm
of intellect and character he combined an earnest
sense of duty which made him throw himself into
the affairs of his petty diocese as energetically as
into the great drama of European politics.

Two other lifelong friendships were the fruit of
this happy visit. Lello Stefani, the "Lslius" of the
letters, was a Roman of noble rank though not
ancient descent, a man of letters, a soldier, and a
statesman, attached to the House of Colonna not
only by hereditary ties, but by bonds of affection
so strong that not even political differences in that
age of bitter feuds could strain them. Very happily
chosen was the name of " Laelius," suggested no
doubt by its likeness to " Lello," and approved as
reminiscent of the La£lii and the Scipios. " That
name of note among old-world friends still endures
as a name of good omen to friendships," wrote

J

I

I

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP 47

Petrarch ; "and this third Laelius is my second self,
nay, rather one and the same with me."

Dearer even than Lo^Iius. dearest indeed of all
Petrarch's friends, was the young Flemish musician
Lewis, known to the poet and his circle as their |
Socrates. *'Thoualone,mySocrales,"writesPetrarch
twenty years later, "wert given to me not, as the rest
of my friends, by the land of Italy, but by Annea
Campinea;, so that the poverty of thy fatherland
might be exalted in the richness of thy talent, and
Nature assert her prerogative of fashioning great
souls from any soil and under every sky. There-
fore to my profit she bore thee, a man of such parts,
and brought thee forth at the very time when I was
being born afar off in another sphere of the world ;
and although thy birth made thee a foreigner, yet
art thou become more than half Italian by the
courtesy of thy spirit, by the intimacies of thy life,
and especially by thy love for me. Marvellous that
in men born so far apart there should be such
neighbourhood of souls, such unity of wills, as have
now in our case been attested by the witness of
twenty years ! From the earnestness of thy char-
acter and from thy sweet pleasantness we chose
thee thy surname ; and while thy supremacy in the
art of music might have persuaded us to call thee
Aristoxenus, the better judgment of thy friends
prevailed in naming thee our Socrates." A volume
might be filled with quotations from Petrarch,
illustrating the depth and the ardour of this flaw-
less friendship : to Socrates he writes every pass-
I ing thought with that perfect confidence which

48 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

reveals the small things of life as readily as the
great, which is not afraid of giving undue impor-
tance to trifles nor shy of opening the heart on
matters of the gravest moment, but utters whatever
is uppermost in the mind without reserve and with-
out disguise, in the happy certainty that whatever
interests or affects the speaker will equally interest
and affect the hearer. Petrarch was a good lover
and a good hater ; in all his friendships we are
charmed by his loyalty, his ardour, and his most
delightful partiality ; but in the friendship with
Socrates we find in addition a tenderness of
sentiment, a lover-like self-abandonment, which
distinguishes tt in kind and in quality from all
the rest.

In mid-autumn the whole party returned to
Avignon, and Petrarch took up his residence in the
house of Giaconio's elder brother, the Cardinal
Giovanni Colonna. He himself would have pre-
ferred to remain with his first patron, but Giacomo
judged more wisely of his friend's interest : his own
career, brilliantly as it had opened, was still in the
making ; it would be affected by the accidents of
Roman and Papal politics, and he could not there-
fore give Petrarch either a settled home or the
certainty of leisure for his work. On the other
hand, the Cardinal's position was assured : three
years earlier, while still a young man under thirty,
he had received the highest dignity of the Church
short of the Papacy itself, and the great influence
which any Cardinal of his House would inevitably
possess was heightened in his case by the elevation

I

I

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP 49

of his character, by his blameless life, and by his
reputation for independence in speech and action.
Moreover, his house at Avignon was the centre
of learned and polite society. He prized his posi-
tion as a patron of letters, and would fully appre-
ciate the fact of which Petrarch himself seemed
charmingly unconscious, that his prot^g^'s reputation
as a scholar and a poet would add to the distinction
of his household, and amply repay him for his
hospitality.

For the next sixteen years their personal relations
were of the pleasantest, and even after Petrarch's
political adhesion to Rienzi had made it impossible
for him to be the intimate associate of a Colonna,
he still wrote to the Cardinal in terms of unabated
respect and gratitude. Probably he never felt for
him quite the same ardour of brotherly love which
Giacomo had inspired in him. But he revered him
as "a man of the utmost goodness and innocence
of heart, far beyond the wont of cardinals." He
was attached to him by ties of intellectual sympathy
and community of tastes, and the friendship be-
tween them was so close that Petrarch could declare
that in the Cardinal's household he " lived many
years, not as under a master, but as under a father ;
nay, rather as with a most loving brother, or still
more truly as with himself, and in his own house."
A little incident which happened while Petrarch
was an inmate of the house throws so interesting a
light, alike on the personal relations between the
two men and on domestic discipline in the four-
teenth century, that it is worth quoting at length

50 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

in spite of its triviality. " You may remember,"
Petrarch wrote some years later to the Cardinal,
" how there was once a serious quarrel among some
of your people, and blows were struck, at which you
were so justly incensed that you sat down as it
were on a judgment-seat, and calling your household
together, administered an oath to each one of them,
binding them to speak the truth. Even your
brother Agapito, Bishop of Luni, had sworn, and I
was just stretching out my hand, when in the full tide
of your anger you drew back the Gospels, and in the
hearing of them all declared that you were satisfied
with my simple word. And to make it clear that
you never regretted your action, and that the kind-
ness of it was not unpremeditated, whenever similar
incidents occurred, as they often did, you never
allowed me to be sworn, though all the rest were
bound by oath."

In the Cardinal's house Petrarch had the happi-
ness of still living with Socrates, and for a lime
with Lselius too ; he also found installed there two
friends, the soldier Mainardo Accursio of Florence,
and the Churchman Luca Cristiano of Piacenza,
with whom he lived thenceforward on terms of
closest intimacy. He had certainly known Luca
and possibly Mainardo also at Bologna, but it was
at Avignon that the acquaintance ripened into so
affectionate a friendship that Petrarch could write
of it to Socrates : " The four of us had but one
mind. . . . Where could you find a kindlier spirit
than our Luca or a more genial comrade than
Mainardo? The former, indeed, was so formed in

I
I
I

I

I

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP 51

mind as to be not only the sweetest and brightest
of housemates, but also the sharer and companion
of our studies ; while the latter, though unpractised
in matters of this sort, was abundantly furnished
with the qualities which are the object of such
studies, to wit with courtesy, faith, liberality, and
constancy of mind. In a word, though untrained
in the liberal arts, he had learned to be a good man
and a good friend, and it was better for us to have
one such in our band, than for us all to be devoted
to scholarship and negligent of everything else."
Mainardo has generally been identified with the
Olympius of the letters, but some recent critics
ascribe the name to Luca ; the point is a doubtful
one, and the safe course is to speak of both friends
by their real names. Both of them, Petrarch de-
clares, knew every thought of his heart as he knew
theirs, and many years later he gave a practical
proof of his affection for Luca by resigning a
canonry at Modena in his favour.

Petrarch was fortunate too in his relations with 1
the whole Colonna family, Stefaiio the Elder, at
this time on a visit to his son the Cardinal, treated
him from the first like one of his own sons. There
must have been a peculiarly winning charm in the
poet's character, which throughout his life made
him the friend and confidant rather than the de-
pendent of his patrons. In his presence the sternest
character grew gentle, and the stiffest neck bowed
willingly to the yoke of affection, so that to him
Azzo da Correggio was sincere and Bernabb
Visconti courteous. And old Stefano, the man of

52 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

antique mould, who "looked like Julius Ca;sar or
Africanus come back in the flesh, but for his great
age," who was "the bravest and stoutest man of
our time in confronting a foe, though so loving to
his family that he seemed wrapped up in their life,"
Stefano, whose fierce triumphs and bitter sufferings
in his struggle with Boniface VIII seemed to have
hardened body and soul in him to iron, became all
gentleness in his intercourse with Petrarch, confided
to him with tears the forebodings of his heart as to
the fate that awaited his family, and granted to his
intercession what he had refused to many other
friends, the pardon of one of his sons with whom he
had had a bitter quarrel. Such confidence and
kindness from one so stern and unbending to most
men made a deep impression on Petrarch, whose
sensibility was a prominent element in his disposi-
tion, and he always speaks of Stefano as " a man of
unique character, to be regarded with mingled awe
and admiration."

Much more familiar was his intercourse with
Stefano's brother, Giovanni Colonna di San Vito ;
he too had played a brave part in the struggle with
Boniface VIII, but he was not cast in his brother's
iron mould ; exile and hardship and the gout had
done much to break his spirit, and he was now an
amiable but rather querulous old man, who con-
ceived an extraordinary affection for Petrarch, and
treated him like a friend of his own age. For his
diversion Petrarch wrote a comedy, which he after-
wards burnt, and after Giovanni's departure from
Avignon at the end of 1331 wrote him several

i

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP

53

I

I

letters, as well as a humorous fable called The Spider
and the Gout.

Cardinal Colonna's house was Petrarch's home]
for nearly seven years, and here he had opportuni-/
ties of meeting the many distinguished men fromi
all parts of Europe, who came on errands of busi-
ness or of diplomacy to the Papal Court. Among
others he became acquainted with the celebrated
Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham in 1333, and
soon afterwards Chancellor and Lord High Treas-
urer of England, who was entrusted by Edward III
with no less than three diplomatic missions to the
Pope. On either the first or the second of these
Petrarch met him, and had a discussion with him
on the site of the Island of Thule. He describes
the author of Pkilobiblon as a man of brilliant
talents and good knowledge of letters, from his
youth up curious to an incredible degree in abstruse
questions, and already possessed of one of the finest
libraries in the world ; a description which tallies
well enough with the received estimate of Richard
as a brilliant dilettante and amateur of literature,
rather than a profound and serious scholar.

To this period undoubtedly belong a great many
of the Italian poems, and from them we may infer
that Laura was resident in Avignon, and that her
poet had frequent opportunities of meeting her.
To this period also belongs the Latin poetical letter
to Enea Tolomei of Siena, called forth by King
John of Bohemia's visit to Avignon and subsequent
descent into Italy. John had first invaded Italy in
1330 as the ally of Lewis of Bavaria, but the

54 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

latter, suspecting him of fighting for his own hand,
had picked a quarrel with him and instigated a
rising against him in Bohemia. John left his son
Charles, a lad of sixteen, in nominal command of
his Italian army, hastened home, and soon restored
order in his own kingdom. Then, being still eager
to further his Italian projects, he turned to Philip
of France, and so began the alliance which eventu-
ally brought him to his death at Cr^cy. Philip,
ever ready to fish in troubled waters and sure that
in the event of success he would get the lion's
share of the plunder, agreed to help John with a
large force ; and to give some colour of justification
to their enterprise, these royal filibusters agreed
that John should go to Avignon and obtain the
Pope's sanction. Once more Italian patriotism was
roused against the foreigner, once more old enemies
sank their differences and formed a temporary
league against the Franco- Bohemian invaders ; and
Petrarch, burning with indignant zeal, wrote that
letter to Tolomel which is the Latin counterpart of
the noble ode Italia Mia^ written long afterwards
at a time of even sorer trouble to Italy. In both
poems we feel the purity and strength of his love
for Italy and the loftiness of his political idealism,
and, what is perhaps even more remarkable, in
the Latin letter we find Petrarch the enthusiast, the
poet, some would say the visionary, going straight
to the heart of the matter and laying his finger
unerringly on the real practical cause of the mis-
chief. Others might be misled by appearances —
even so shrewd a writer as the chronicler Giovanni

I

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP 55

Villani speaks of John as Italy's chief enemy — but
Petrarch, though as yet little versed in practical
politics, detects Philip as the real culprit, and,
neglecting the Bohemians, directs the whole force
of his invective against the French.

The Italian league was soon successful. John
lost Pavia to Azzo Visconti, and the French army
was soon afterwards annihilated before Ferrara, so
that by the month of October, 1333, the King was
forced to return to Bohemia, and in the words of an
old writer, " the fame of him vanished like smoke
from the plains of Lombardy." Meanwhile Petrarch
had set out on a journey to Paris. Probably the
Pope's action in secretly encouraging the invasion
of Italy, while pretending to discourage it, had
intensified his dislike of the Papal Court, and the
unsuccessful course of his love for Laura may have
made him restless and dissatisfied. He was certainly
eager for sight-seeing, and persuaded the Cardinal,
though with some difficulty, to let him go on a
foreign tour. In Paris he sought out the Augus-
tinian friar Dionigi of Borgo San Sepolcro, who
was lecturing at the University on Philosophy and
Theology. Dionigi was a man of deep piety and
unusual learning, a theologian of scholarly sym-
pathies, and a friend to whom Petrarch could
confide all the troubles of his heart. Probably he
took him for his confessor ; certainly he sought his
advice about his love for Laura. Dionigi showed
keen insight into the character of his penitent. He
judged that spiritual zeal would be for him the best
antidote to an earthly passion, and showed an even

56 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

more remarkable grasp of his moral and intellectual
temperament by directing his attention not to the
more ascetic of the fathers, but to the Hberal and
cultured Augustine. Petrarch already knew and
1 possessed the De Civitate Dei ; Dionigi now gave
I him a copy of the Confessions^ which Petrarch ever
I afterwards carried about with him in all his journeys.
Predisposed as he was to admire St. Augustine, it
is nevertheless from his intimacy with Fra Dionigi
that we must date the passionate enthusiasm of hero-
worship which henceforward inspired him with the
same feeling for Augustine as his spiritual guide
that he already felt for Cicero as his master in
literature. From this intimacy too dates the de-
velopment in Petrarch of a devotional impulse
which henceforth shared the empire of his soul with
his zeal for learning. He has now two ideals, those
of the scholar and of the saint, and occasionally,
though not very often, the two ideals clash in
violent spiritual conflict In such moments of agony
— for to Petrarch's sensitive nature the strife was
nothing less than agony — he is possessed with
ascetic fervour, and for a moment condemns all
earthly aims as vanity and vexation of spirit ; but
this was not his normal temper ; it was only at rare
and brief intervals that he lost sight of the nobler
conception of the scholar who is also a saint.

"You tell me," he writes in answer to a banter-
ing accusation from Giacomo Colonna, "that I do
but affect a reverence for Augustine and his works,
while really I have never torn myself away from
the poets and philosophers. And why, pray, should

J

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP 57

I tear myself away from those to whom you can see I
that Augustine himself clung close?" Again he)
asserts that Cicero's writings, " though diverse from
Christianity, are never adverse to it," and that the
great classical authors are full of sentiments in
harmony with the Christian spirit. And when
Boccaccio was momentarily thrown off his balance
by a supposed revelation commanding him to re-
nounce poetry and scholarship, Petrarch could
reassure him by a letter containing some of the
noblest passages ever written on the right relation
of literature to religion. And the point which chiefly
attracts him in the De Civitatc Dei'i^ that Augustine 1
" could base it on a great foundation of philosophers
and poets, and adorn it with all the colours of the |
orators and historians." '

Far more violent and far more constant was the
struggle between spiritual devotion and earthly love.
The latter was, indeed, too strong a feeling to be
overcome by any concurrent emotion, but henceforth
at least " it no longer held sole possession of the
spirit's chamber, but found there another sentiment
fighting and striving against it," It is just this strife
of conflicting emotions that calls forth our liveliest
sympathy. Doubtless the steadfast man who marches
to his end with never a stumble by the way is a
heroic figure, but cur tears flow and our hearts are
wrung rather for the sensitive soul responsive to
every impression, and battered by the storm of
opposing passions, which nevertheless through error
and through pain achieves its escape as through
Vanity Fair and the Valley of the Shadow of

58 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Death to the Delectable Mountains and the peace
of Beulah.

In Paris he " spent a long time, exploring it
thoroughly from a wish to see everything, and to
discover whether all its reputed glories were real or
imaginary, and, when daylight often failed, making
use of the night as well." Next he visited Ghent,
"which, like Paris, boasts of Julius Cresar as its
founder, and all the other peoples of Flanders and
Brabant, whose trade is the preparation of wool and
weaving." Thence he went to Li^ge, "a place
noted for its clergy," which he had already visited
four years previously, and to Aix-la-Chapelle, where
some priests of the cathedral showed him in MS. a
legend of Charlemagne and the foundation of the
city. From Aix, after taking the baths, "which
are warm like those of Baice," he went to Cologne,
"situated on the left bank of the Rhine, a place
which may well be proud of its position, its river,
and its people. Marvellous was it in a barbaric
land to find so advanced a civilization, so beautiful
a city, such dignity in the men, and such comeliness
in the women." By good luck he arrived on St.
John's Eve, and witnessed a picturesque local cere-
mony performed on that day. And, by a further
stroke of good fortune, which shows how widely
his fame as a poet was already spread, he found
friends in the place, with whom he could converse
in Latin, and who could give him an explanation of
what he saw. About sunset "the whole bank of
the river was covered with a brilliant and vast
concourse of women. Good heavens! What beauty

I

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP 59

of form, feature, and dress ! One whose heart was
not already engaged might well have been smitten
with love. I stood on a spot of rising ground,
from which I could attend to all that was going on.
There was a wonderful throng without any disturb-
ance ; and each in her turn the women, some of
whom were girdled with sweet-scented herbs,
hastened to turn their sleeves above the elbow and
.wash their white hands and arms in the current,
murmuring some soft words in their foreign tongue.
, . . Understanding nothing of the ceremony, I
asked one of my friends in a quotation from Virgil — ■
' What means this concourse at the river's bank?
What seek the souls here gathered ? '
And he answered that this was a very old national
custom, the women, especially among the common
people, believing that all the impending misfortune
of a whole year is washed away by this day's
ablution, and that henceforth better fortune succeeds.
At which I smiled and said, ' O too happy dwellers
by the Rhine, if all your miseries are purged by
him! Neither Po nor Tiber has ever availed to
wash away ours. You pass on your evils down the
Rhine to the Britons, and willingly would we send
ours to the Africans and Illyrians ; but our streams,
it would seem, are too sluggish.' At this they all
laughed, and at last, late in the evening, we left the
riverside."

At Cologne he was greatly interested in " the
illustrious monuments of Roman greatness," and in
the association of the place with Agrippa and
Augustus. He saw "the Capitol, the image of

6o PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

ours, except that in place of the Senate, which
there debated questions of peace and war, here a
mixed choir of comely lads and maidens sings
nightly praises to God "; he also saw "the beautiful,
though yet unfinished, church in the midst of the
town, which they rightly call their high church,
and in which lie the bodies of the Magi Kings,
brought by three stages from East to West." On
the last day of June he left Cologne, and gave proof
of his courage, not to say rashness, by venturing to
travel alone, unarmed, and in time of war through
the forest of the Ardennes, which he found "a
dismal and weird country," but which inspired him
to write the beautiful sonnet Per mez£ i boschi.
At length, "after compassing many a large tract of
country," he came on the 8th of August to Lyons,
"another noble colony of the Romans, and a little
older than Cologne"; and to his transports at the
sight of the Rhone we owe the sonnet Millepiagge.
Here he fell in with one of Cardinal Colonna's
servants, who gave him news which decided him to
rest a few days in Lyons, and then go quietly on to
Avignon by boat.

Giacomo Colonna had for some time past been
planning a visit to Rome, and had promised to take
Petrarch with him. To see Rome, and especially
to see it in his friend's company, was one of the
poet's dearest wishes, and he was hurrying back to
Avignon in the hope that they might make the
journey together in the course of the autumn, when
he heard from the Cardinal's servant that Giacomo
and La:lius had already started without waiting, as

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP

Gi

vliad been expressly agreed, for his return. Bitterly
I disappointed, he wrote to Giacomo to reproach him
■ for his breach of faith, the cause of which he could
I not conjecture. But on arriving at Avignon, he
I learnt that family affairs of great importance had
required the Bishop's immediate presence in Rome.
I Some years previously the perpetual quarrels of
I the Colonna and the Orsini families had been sus-
fc|)ended by a truce, the term of which expired this
Fsummer. The Pope, unable to bring about a last-
ling reconciliation, issued a Bull on the 3rd of June
[prolonging this truce for a year, but it was already
Itoo late. In May the Orsini, headed by Bertoldo,
the bravest and most popular of their chiefs,
entrapped Stefano Colonna the Younger into an
I ambush, where they attacked him with greatly
I superior forces. But Stefano and his party, though
I outnumbered and taken by surprise, fought so
1 gallantly that they won a complete victory, routing
the Orsini and killing Bertoldo and his cousin
Francesco. Such at least was the story as told
I and believed in Cardinal Colonna's household, and
the Pope's subsequent action seems to confirm its
truth, in spite of Villani's assertion that Stefano
I Colonna was the author of the ambush. Often as
* the rival houses had engaged in similar affrays, this
I was the first occasion on which any of their chiefs
I had been killed, and the affair created an immense
sensation in Rome and Avignon. The Orsini,
I aided by their relative Cardinal Poggetto, the Papal
Legate, were eager to avenge their defeat, and it
was to counteract their schemes that Giacomo

62 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

started in such haste for Rome. Probably through
his influence and that of Cardinal Giovanni, the
Pope was persuaded to administer a severe rebuke
to his Legate, and the House of Colonna main-
tained for the time its superiority over its rivals.
Petrarch, who as yet knew nothing of Roman
politics but what he heard from his patrons, of
course shared their gratification, and addressed a
stirring sonnet to Stefano the Younger, exhorting
him to avoid the error of Hannibal, who conquered
at Canna;, but failed to follow up his victory. With
this sonnet, which was written in Italian that the
Colonna men-at-arms might understand it, he sent
a Latin letter to Stefano to the same effect, and
also composed a Latin poem made up of original
lines and quotations placed alternately, which, how-
ever, he destroyed on finding that others had anti-
cipated him in this queer method of composition.

Much as he rejoiced in the victory of his patrons,
he was still more elated by the news, which he
also heard on reaching Avignon, that King Philip
of France had engaged to lead a new Crusade,
and that the Pope had announced his intention
of bringing back the Papacy to Italy. To him,
as to all devout men of his age, it seemed a shame-
ful and horrible thing that the holy places should
be in the possession of unbelievers, and that
Christian princes and states should turn their arms
one against another, instead of combining to rescue
the cradle of the faith from Saracen domination.
In spite of the failure of all previous Crusades, he
seems to have had no doubt that success was now

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP

63

' possible and even easy, if only the effort were
sincerely made ; and the hope inspired him to

I address to Giacomo Colonna the ode O aspeitata
in Cie/, in which he exhorts the Bishop to employ
his great influence and his unrivalled eloquence in
rousing the sons of Italy to take their part in the
glorious enterprise. John XXII's proposal to return
to Rome, which he regarded as the only rightful
seat of the Papacy, stirred him to yet higher en-
thusiasm. Thus it seemed to him that Christendom
now bade fair to escape from two of the chief evils
that afflicted the age, and the double hope is finely
expressed in the sonnet // successor di Carlo, in
which he urges the Princes of Italy to assist King
and Pope in their endeavours. Philip, who but a
few months since seemed to be Italy's worst enemy,
can now be honoured with the title of "successor to
Charlemagne"; and when "the Vicar of Christ,
returning to his nest, sees first Bologna and then
our noble Rome," Italy, the gentle lamb, will rise
and smite the fierce wolves that have torn her. So
perish all who sow dissension betwixt hearts that
love should bind ! Disappointment soon succeeded
to hope ; King Philip took the cross indeed, but
with it received from the Pope the right to levy
a tithe on the revenues of the Galilean Church, and
with the grant in his hands he soon dropped the
pretext of crusading zeal on which he had obtained
it. The Pope kept up appearances a little longer,
and the Cardinal Legate was ordered to build a
palace at Bologna for his reception on his way 1

Rorr

jJogna
Presently, however.

the palace took the

64 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

form of a fortress commanding the city, and the
Pope too had got what he wanted by his pretext.

He died in the following year at the age of
ninety-one ; he had been Pope eighteen years, and
had amassed eighteen million lire in specie, as well
as plate, gems, and ornaments to the value of seven
millions more. He was not a great or a good Pope,
and as a theologian he nearly split the Church by
propounding an unorthodox opinion on the Beatific
Vision. But he must have had some good qualities
of head and heart, for though he remained at Avig-
non, he was shrewd enough to appreciate the value
of the Roman tradition, and he won the friendship of
so upright a man as Cardinal Colonna, who, as Pet-
rarch tells us, loved the man though not his errors.
The Conclave which followed was a hotbed of
intrigue ; the French party was the strongest, but
the Italians, though unable to carry a candidate of
their own, could prevent any one whom they disliked
from obtaining the requisite two-thirds majority.
To gain time, the Frenchmen put forward Cardinal
Fournier, the least influential member of the College;
but when the scrutiny was taken, it was found that
every one had voted for Fournier in the belief that
only a few others would do so, and he was declared
unanimously elected. The new Pope himself was
more astonished than any one at the result, and is
said to have exclaimed, "Your choice has fallen on
an ass." He took the name of Benedict Xll. The
election of a Frenchman was, of course, distasteful
to Petrarch, but it was not long before Benedict
showed him marks of personal friendship and

J

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP

65

esteem ; he allowed Petrarch to address him in a
poetical Latin letter urging the return of the Papacy
to Rome, and tliough he never yielded either to this
or to subsequent appeals of the same kind, he was
certainly not displeased at them, for he presently
conferred on their author his first ecclesiastical pre-
ferment, a canonry at Lombez.

Soon afterwards began Petrarch's friendship with
Azzo da Correggio, one of those friendships with
Italian despots which have puzzled some of his
admirers and scandalised many of his critics. How,
it is asked, could Petrarch, with the praises of
virtue and fidelity always on his lips, seek the
society and extol the merits of men steeped in
crime, to whom treachery and assassination were
mere moves in a game of political intrigue, and
whose reputation for cruelty and lust is the blackest
spot in the record of the Italian people? With
many members of these ruling families Petrarch
lived on terms of intimate acquaintance ; to three
of them, namely, to Azzo da Correggio and to
Jacopo and Francesco da Carrara, he was bound
by ties of warmest friendship. How was this pos-
sible ? The easy explanation and the false one is
that Petrarch was a hypocrite and a sycophant.
The truth is less easily stated, and to men of our
age and country will never be fully comprehensible.
In the first place, it must be remembered that until
the researches of comparatively recent historians
shed a flood of light on the period from the
thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, history had
given a one-sided account of these Italian despots.

66 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

The world was so shocked at their unspeakable
crimes that it forgot their equally extraordinary
merits. Numbers of them were men of the most
brilliant intellectual gifts, lovers of literature, appre-
ciative patrons of art, gallant in war, splendid and
usually generous in peace. They were, to use a
modern catchword, strenuous men in every depart-
ment of life. Thorough was their motto, efficiency
their ideal ; if morality could be banished from the
world, they might be taken as types of complete
manhood. The man who saw only their good side
might well be carried away by enthusiasm for their
excellencies, and it is unquestionable that some-
thing in Petrarch led them to show him as much
as possible of their best and as little as possible of
their worst side. Of their base intrigues and un-
scrupulous treacheries he evidently accepted the
version which they themselves gave him ; and if
this says little for his faculty of impartial discern-
ment, such blindness to the faults of a friend is at
worst the weakness of an over-trustful nature.
However incomplete the explanation, to those who
have entered into Petrarch's character the facts are
indisputable, that he was not a hypocrite, and that
he was the friend of Azzo.

Their friendship began at Avignon, but was the
consequence of a faction-fight at Parma : the family
of Correggio, acting as henchmen of the Lords of
Verona, had driven the Rossi out of Parma ; the
latter came to plead their cause before the Pope,
and were opposed by Azzo da Correggio and
Gulielmo da Pastrengo, an accomplished scholar

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP

67

land lawyer of Verona. Azzo and Gulielmo engaged

Petrarch as their advocate in the Papal consistory,

[ and the poet won his case in this, the only lawsuit

I in which there is any record of his having appeared.

I His success got him the temporary goodwill of

[ Mastino della Scala, at that time Lord of Verona,

and the enmity of Ugolino de' Rossi, Archbishop of

Parma ; it is more important that he was henceforth

on terms of warm friendship with both Azzo and

Gulielmo.

To the following year belongs an incident trivial
in itself, but interesting as showing a little trait in
which Petrarch anticipated the modern spirit. Ac-
companied by his brother Gherardo and a couple of
servants, he made the ascent of Mont Ventoux,
I *'a steep and almost inaccessible mass of crags,"
I and one of the highest peaks in Provence. He
1 Was fascinated by the wild beauty and majestic
I solitude of peak and ravine, which were foolishness
I- to the classical and a terror to the mediaeval world ;
I and however small an achievement the ascent of
I Mont Ventoux may appear to a member of the
I Alpine Club, it entitles Petrarch to be called the
I first of the climbers. Among the ridges of the hills
[• the brothers found an old shepherd, who tried hard
to dissuade them from the ascent, saying that "fifty
years ago he had been led by the same impetuous
eagerness of youth to climb the peak, but had got
nothing by it save toil and regret and the tearing
I of his flesh and clothes by the rocks and brambles ;
L and never either before or since had any one
[been known to dare the like." The brothers, how-

68 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

ever, persevered, and the old man, finding remon-
strance of no avail, showed them a steep track
among the rocks, still giving ihem many warnings,
which he kept shouting at them after they had gone
forward. " We left with him," says Petrarch in a
letter to Fra Dionigi, "so much of our dress and
other things as was likely to be in our way, and so,
girded just for the mere ascent, we set ourselves
eagerly to our climb. But, as always happens, the
strenuous effort was very soon followed by fatigue ;
so after going a little way we rested on one of the
rocks.

" Thence we started again, but at a slower pace,
and I especially began to prosecute mountain climb-
ing at a more moderate speed. My brother pur-
sued his upward path by the shortest way over the
very ridges of the mountain ; but I was less hardy
and inclined to the lower paths, and when he called
after me and pointed to the more direct way, 1
answered that I hoped to find the ascent of the
other side easier, and was not afraid of taking a
longer route if it offered a gentler slope. This I
put forward as an excuse for my laziness ; and while
the others had already arrived on high ground, I
kept wandering along the hollows, though no easier
ascent appeared anywhere, but the way grew longer
and my vain toil heavier. Presently 1 grew heartily
tired and sick of this aimless wandering, and deter-
mined to go straight up the heights. There, tired
and distressed. I came up with my brother, who
was waiting for me and had refreshed himself with
a long rest, and for a little lime we went on to-

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP 69

gether. But we had hardly left that ridge behind,
when behold ! I forgot my former circuit, and again
fell upon the lower paths ; so I once more wandered
along the hollows, seeking a long and easy way,
but finding only long trouble. I tried, forsooth, to
put off the trouble of climbing ; but no human
device can do away with the nature of things, and
no material body can rise higher by descending.
Why make a long story? Three or four times in
a few hours the same thing occurred to me, to my
own vexation and my brother's amusement." So
he sat down in a hollow and moralised on the far-
off altitude of the life of blessedness and the
strenuous climbing needed to attain to it ; and
" these thoughts wonderfully strengthened both body
and mind in me to undergo the rest of the ascent.
Would that I might accomplish in spirit that other
journey, for which I sigh day and night, even as,
overcoming at length all difficulties, I accomplished
this of to-day with my bodily feet ! . . . There is
one peak higher than the rest, which the rustics
call 'the little boy,' for what reason I know not,
unless it be from sheer contradiction, as I suspect
is the case with sundry other names ; for it looks
truly like the father of all the neighbouring moun-
tains. On its top is a little piece of level ground,
on which we at length rested our weary limbs. . . .
Here I stood amazed . . . the clouds were under
our feet . . . and I looked in the direction of Italy,
to which my heart is most inclined. . . , Then a
fresh train of thought occurred to me, and I re-
membered that to-day was the tenth anniversary of

70 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

my leaving Bologntu . . . Oh ! the changes of those
years ! . . . I no longer love what I used to love ;
nay, that is not true ; I do love still, but with more
modesty and a deeper melancholy. Yes, I still
love, but unwillingly, in spite of myself, in sorrow
and tribulation of heart. . . . Then I began to
think that in ten years more I might at least hope
to be fit to encounter death with a quiet mind . . .
And passing at last from thoughts of myself ... I
began to admire the view, from the hills of the
province of Lyons on the right to the bay of
Marseilles on the left, with the Rhone flowing close
under us. While looking at each object in the
landscape, and now considering the earthly scene
and again passing to matters of a higher nature,
it occurred to me to look at the Confessions of
Augustine which you gave me, and which I keep
and always carry about with me in memory alike of
the author and the giver. I opened the little volume
of tiny compass but infinite sweetness, intending to
read the first passage that might offer ; for what
could I find there but words of piety and devotion ?
It chanced, however, that I hit upon the tenth book
of the work. My brother stood listening, waiting
to hear a sentence from Augustine by my mouth ;
and God is my witness, as well as he who was
standing by, that my eyes first lit on the passage
where it is written : ' And men go about to marvel
at the heights of the mountains, at the huge waves
of the sea, at the broad estuaries of the rivers, at
the circuit of the ocean, and at the revolutions of
the stars, and forsake their own souls.' I stood

TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP ^l

amazed, and begging my brother, who was eager
to hear the passage, not to trouble me, I shut the
book, angry with myself for having even now been
marvelling at earthly things, when I ought long
since to have learnt even from the philosophers of
the Gentiles that there is nothing marvellous in
comparison with the soul, and when it is great all
things are small beside it . . . Then I felt that I
had seen enough of the mountain, and turned my
mind's eye back upon myself; and from that time
no one heard me speak till we reached the bottom.
For that passage had brought me occupation
enough ; nor could I believe that 1 had lighted on
it by mere chance, but I fancied that what I had
read there was a special message to my own heart.
. . . Amid the reflections thus engendered ... I
returned in the depth of night and by moonlight to
the rustic inn, whence I had started before dawn,
and where I am writing you this hurried letter
while the servants are preparing supper. . . . You
see then, my loving father, that I would hide nothing
from your sight, but am diligent in making known
to you not only the general course of my life, but
the separate thoughts of my heart. Pray, I entreat
you, for those thoughts, that though they have long
been wandering and unstable, they may stand firm
at the last, and after fruitless tossing on many a sea,
may return to the one good true and sure founda-
tion of the soul."

CHAPTER IV

ROME AND VAUCLUSE

TEN full years had passed since Petrarch, sum-
moned back from Bologna by the news of
his father's death, had quitted Italy, the land of his
devoted attachment ; and it does not appear that
he had yet had an opportunity of revisiting her.
Three years earlier, as we have seen, he had hoped
to go to Rome with Giacomo Colonna, but the
latter's hurried return thither after the affray with
the Orsini had baulked him of the expected visit.
In December of this year a bantering invitation from
Giacomo gave him another opportunity which he
eagerly seized. "With joy and laughter" he read
in this letter that his friend esteemed him already,
in spite of his youth, the cleverest deceiver in the
world. " You try to deceive Heaven itself," the
Bishop seems to have said, " by feigning devotion
to Saint Augustine ; you do deceive the world and
get yourself immense credit by feigning a passion
for ' Laura,' when the crown of ' laurel ' is the real
object of your heart's desire ; and you very nearly
succeeded in deceiving me by feigning a burning
desire to come and visit me in Rome." To this
agreeable jesting, which forms the chief support of
the allegorical theory of Petrarch's love, the poet

ROME AND VAUCLUSE 73

replied by protesting the genuineness of his double
devotion. "Would to God," he cries, "that your
banter were true, and my passion a feint and not
a madness ! . . . But you know well that it is so
violent as to have affected my bodily health and
complexion. ... 1 can only hope that the sore
will come to a head in time, and that 1 may find the
truth of Cicero's saying that 'one day brings a
wound and another day healing.' Against this
fiction, as you call it, of Laura, perhaps that other
fiction of Augustine may help me, for by much
grave reading and meditation I may grow old before
my time. . . . But as to yourself and Rome . . .
answer me seriously ; put out of sight the longing
to see your face, which I have borne now for over
three years, thinking daily, Mo! to-morrow he will
come,' or ' lo ! in a day or two I shall start ' ; take
no account of the heavy burden of my troubles
which I can scarce be content to share with any one
but you ; grant that I have cooled in my desire to
see your most illustrious father, your noble brothers,
and your honourable sisters ; still, what do you
think I would not give to see the walls and hills of
the city, and, as Virgil says, 'the Tuscan Tiber and
the palaces of Rome ' ? No one can imagine how
I long to look upon that city, deserted and the mere
image of old Rome though it be, which I have
never yet seen ! . , . I remember how Seneca
exults in writing to Lucilius from the very villa of
Scipio Africanus, and thinks it no small matter to
have seen the place where that great man spent his
exile, and where he laid his bones, which his father-

74 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

land could not afterwards obtain. If such were the
feelings of a Spaniard, what, think you, must 1 feel,
who am Italian born? For here is no question of
the villa of Liternum or the tomb of Scipio, but of
the city of Rome, where Scipio was born and
nurtured, where he won equal glory as victor and as
accused, and where not only he, but numberless
other men lived, whose fame shall endure for ever."

To him a journey to Rome was indeed a pilgrim-
lage not of religion only, but of politics and culture
jalso. In the continuity of her history he saw an
epitome of human development ; many before him
'had been moved by the recollection of her ancient
glories ; and the theory of her claim to be the seat
alike of Papacy and Empire had been formulated
by Dante in a treatise which may be called the
political testament of the Middle Ages; but Petrarch
is the first to read her history as a whole and to
regard its changing periods as mere phases in one
deathless career. She is to him the sacred city
not merely of Christendom, but of humanity.

The Cardinal's permission for the journey was
obtained, and Petrarch immediately started for
Marseilles, where he took ship for Civiti Vecchia.
Off Elba he encountered a storm, but arrived safely
in port, probably about the middle of January.
Here he found it impossible to go on to Rome
without an escort, for the Orsini had collected a
strong force with which they held the approaches
to the city. For the present therefore he remained
in Capranica (Mons Caprarum), a hill-fortress some
thirty miles from Rome, where he was welcomed

i

ROME AND VAUCLUSE

75

by Orso, Count of Anguillara, who had married
Agnese Colonna, one of Stefano the Elder's many
daughters. Thence he sent a courier to inform
Giacomo of his arrival, and also wrote a full account
of his surroundings to Cardinal Giovanni. " I have
lighted on a place in the Roman territory," he
says, " which would suit my troubled feelings admir-
ably if my mind were not in haste to be elsewhere.
Known formerly as the Mount of Goats ... it
became gradually peopled by men, who built a
citadel on the highest mound, round which have
clustered as many houses as the narrow limits of
the hill allowed. Though unknown to fame, it is
surrounded by famous places ; on one side is Mount
Soracte, well known as the dwelling-place of Sil-
vester, but also made illustrious before Silvester's
time by the songs of the poets ; on another side are
the lake and hill of Ciminus, mentioned by Virgil ;
and there is Sutrium only two miles away, the
favoured haunt of Ceres and, as the legend runs, a
colony of Saturn. Not far from the walls they
show a field in which they say the first crop of corn
in Italy was sown by a foreign king and reaped
with the sickle ; which marvellous benefit so softened
the rude spirit of the people, that this foreigner was
by their favour chosen king during his life and
worshipped after his death, for after reigning to
a good old age, he was represented as a god with a
sickle in his hand. The air here seems most
healthy, and there are beautiful views from the
surrounding hills. . . . Peace alone is wanting to
complete the prosperity of the country. . . . For

76 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

what do you think ? The shepherd arms himself
for his woodland watch, from fear rather of robbers
than of wolves ; the ploughman dons a breastplate
and takes a spear to do the office of a goad in prod-
ding the flank of a troublesome ox ; the fowler
throws a shield over his nets ; the fisherman too
hangs his hooks with their beguiling bait from the
tempered blade of a sword ; and, ridiculous as you
will think it, when a man goes to draw water
from the well, he lowers a rusty helmet at the end
of his dirty rope. In a word, there is nothing done
here without arms. All night long the watchmen
howl upon the walls and voices call to arms ; what
cries are these to take the place of the sounds I
have been wont to draw from the melodious strings!
Among the dwellers in these lands nothing looks
secure ; there is not a word of peace nor a feeling
of their common humanity, only war and hatred
and all things after the likeness of the works of
devils. In this place, illustrious father, half willingly
and half unwillingly I have now spent sixteen
days ; and so powerful is habit, that while all others
rush to the citadel at the clang of arms and braying
of trumpets, I may often be seen wandering over
the hills, diligently thinking over something to win
me the favour of posterity. All are astonished to
see me at my ease, fearless and unarmed ; while I
am astonished to see them all fearful, anxious, and
armed : such differences are there in the ways of
men I If haply I were asked whether 1 wish to go
hence, I should find it hard to answer ; 'twere well
to be gone, and yet 'tis pleasant to stay."

ROME AND VAUCLUSE

77

I

Orso, "the Bear who is gentler than any Iamb," and
Agnes, " one of those women who are best praised
by silent admiration," entertained Petrarch till
Giacomo could join him, which he did on January
26th, riding unmolested from Rome with his eldest
brother Stefano the Younger and only a hundred
horsemen, although five hundred of the Orsini beset
the road. The party probably stayed in Capranica
for some days. Sonnet XXXIV, PercK io t' abdia
guardalo, was certainly written there, and others of
the extant poems probably owe their origin to those
"wanderings among the hills" of which Petrarch
speaks to the Cardinal, Presently they moved on
to Rome, where he was received as one of them-
selves by the whole family, especially by old
Giovanni dl San Vito, who made himself his con-
stant companion and guide through the city. Even
in this day of her humiliation the glories of Rome
paralysed for awhile his powers of composition.
" What must you expect me to write from the
city," he says, "after the long letters I sent you
from the hills! You may well be looking for an
outpouring of eloquence now that I have arrived in
Rome. Well, I have found a vast theme, which
may serve perhaps for future writing ; but just now
I dare not attempt anything, for 1 am overwhelmed
by the miracle of the mighty things around me,
and sink under the weight of astonishment. But
one thing I must tell you. that my experience is
contrary to what you expected. For I remember
that you used to dissuade me from coming hither,
chiefly on the ground that my enthusiasm would

78 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

cool at the sight of the city laid in ruins, and ill-
answering to its fame and to the idea which 1 had
formed of it from books. And 1 too, ihoiigli burn-
ing with eagerness, was not unwilling to wait, fear-
ing lest the image which i had formed in my mind
should suffer loss by actual sight and by the pres-
ence which is ever the foe of great reputations.
This time, however, wonderful to say, nothing has
been lowered and everything has been heightened
by it. In truth, Rome is greater and her remains
are greater than I thought, and my wonder is now
not that she conquered the world, but that she did
not conquer it sooner." Some years later he
reminds Giovanni di San Vito of their delightful
excursions together. "We used to stroll side by
side in the mighty city," he writes, "and not only
in it, but around it as well, and every step brought
some suggestion to stir the mind and loose the
tongue." The two were often accompanied by
Paolo Annibaldi, this year joint Senator of Rome
with Stefano the Younger, the head of a House
allied to that of Colonna by ties of marriage
and friendship. Paolo's " extraordinary worth and
humanity " had made Petrarch his dear friend :
unlike most of the Roman nobles, he cared for the
artistic and historical monuments of the city and
sorrowed over her ruin. His death in the year
1355, while still in the flower of his age, was a
veritable tragedy; one of his sons was killed in a
faction-fight, and he fell dead in an access of grief
across the mutilated body of his boy.

Strongly as Petrarch had always felt the claims of

A

ROME AND VAUCLUSE

79

I

I

Rome to be the seat of Empire and Papacy, he was
now more than ever disposed to assert her rights.
Accordingly he wrote once more to Benedict XII,
resuming the subject of his former poem, but speak-
ing now in his own person, and asserting the
superiority of Rome over all other countries,
Benedict had now settled the theological question
of the Beatific Vision, and so. Petrarch suggested,
had time to take measures for resuming his proper
position as husband of Rome and father of all
Italy. But probably the Pope had never really
intended to return ; certainly, even if he had been
sincere in expressing his wish to do so, the intrigues
of the French party among the Cardinals were
successful in detaining him at Avignon, and so
thoroughly had he become convinced of the necessity
of remaining there, that he was now laying the
foundations of the papal palace designed to
form a permanent residence for himself and his
successors.

We do not know how long Petrarch stayed in
Rome, but he must have left soon after Easter if
he found time during this summer for the extended
travels which seem clearly indicated in a poetical
letter addressed to Giacomo Colonna. These travels
can hardly be assigned to any other date. He
returned to Avignon on August i6th ; at some
time in the interval he paid a visit to Lombez to
take up his canonry there, and in the course of
these four or five months he appears also to have
made a sea trip to Morocco and to have visited the
English Channel. He speaks expressly of having

8o PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

seen "the mountain hardened by Medusa's eye" in
the country of the Moors, by which he must mean
some p;irt of the chain of Mount Atlas; and thence,
he says, he went nortliward, and came " where the
swollen wave of the British sea wears away with
flow and ebb of tide the shores that stand doubtful
which shall receive its stroke." The chronology
is extremely difficult, and some critics take the short
way of treating the whole letter as mere rhetoric.
But the travels indicated were not quite impossible
of accomplishment in the four and a half months
available for them, and to regard inconvenient
allusions as worthless evidence on the ground that
they occur in a poem is to ignore difficulties, not to
solve them.

Avignon on his return appeared to him more
detestable than ever ; during his absence, if we may
trust another of his Latin poetical letters, he had
enjoyed intervals of respite from the violence of his
passion for Laura, but the sight of her rekindled
that passion in ail its fury. We may suppose too
that his hatred of Avignon as the usurper of the
rights of Rome was intensified by his visit to the
Eternal City. For "on my return thence," he tells
us, " I could not endure the disgust and hatred of
things in general, but above all of that most weari-
some city, naturally implanted in my mind, and so
I looked about for some better retreat, as it were a
harbour of refuge, and found the valley, a very
small one, but solitary and pleasant, which is called
The Closed Valley, fifteen miles distant from Avig-
non, where rises the king of all river sources, the

A

I

I
t

ROME AND VAUCLUSE 81

Sorgue. Captivated by the charm of the place, I
transferred thither my books and myself," He
bought a small house at Vaucluse with a strip of
riverside meadow adjoining it, and so installed him-
self in the one of his many residences which is best
entitled to be called his home, and has been most
closely associated by posterity with his name and
fame.

Many reasons make the date of his settling at /
Vaucluse one of the most important in his life. I
Hitherto he had been entirely dependent upon his '
patrons; now, though still looking to them for prefer-
ment, he had a home of his own in which he could
order his life after his own fashion. Here he was
free from the agitation which the sight of Laura
never failed to renew in his spirit — he intimates
repeatedly that to avoid her was his main object
in going to Vaucluse — and here he could indulge
that love of scenery, that passion for nature and
solitude, which was so rare among the men of his
day7~and contrasts so strongly with his own interest
in man as " the proper study of mankind." Here
too he had abundant leisure for literary work ; he
was free from the bustle and distractions of town
life, and he made such good use of his time that
" nearly everything which he ever wrote was either
finished, begun, or planned here." But though
enjoying the leisure and quiet of almost complete
solitude, he was not cut off from his friends or from
society. Socrates and Lxlius came often to see
him ; the Cardinal's house at Avignon was open to
him whenever he chose to go there ; and visitors

82

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

from every part of Europe, attracted by his fame,
sought him out in his retreat. "While I was living
in France in the period of my youth," he says, " I
was surprised to see sundry noble a.nd talented men
come from the further provinces of France, as well
as from Italy, with no other design than that of see-
ing me and holding conversation with me ; among
whom was Peter of Poitiers, of honourable memory,
a man illustrious alike for piety and for learning.
And you will wonder the more when I tell you that
some of these visitors sent me magnificent presents
in advance, and then came in the wake of their gifts,
as though they would smooth the way and open the
gates by their liberality. . . . By word and deed
they proclaimed that they came to Avignon solely
to see me, so that if I was not in the city, they
would take no heed of anything there, but hastened
on to the source of the Sorgue, where I generally
spent the summer." Such homage was very grati-
fying to Petrarch ; the love of fame was strong in
him ; he shared and fostered that eager pursuit of
personal glory which marked the Italians of the
Renaissance. He made some parade of despising
the opinions of " the vulgar," but in his heart he
liked even popular applause, and he could not fail
to be elated by the unstinted homage paid to his
genius by men qualified to appreciate it. It is
pleasant to add that when embarrassed by the diffi-
culty of disposing of these admirers' gifts without
ofTence to the givers, he solved the problem with
characteristic generosity by sharing them with his
friends.

ROME AND VAUCLUSE

83

At Vaucliistj he hritl the happiness of finding a
neighbour who soon beciime one of his most
intimate friends. Philip de Cabassoles was a
member of a noble Provencal family connected by
long-standing ties of marriage and friendship with
the House of Anjou, and especially with the
Neapolitan branch of it. King Robert of Naples
indeed, who as Count of Provence was his sove-
reign, held him in such esteem that by his will he
appointed him a member of the Neapolitan Council
of Regency during the minority of his grand-
daughter Joanna. Philip's personal qualities justified
the unanimous good opinion of his contemporaries.
He had already won a reputation for brilliant intel-
lectual attainments ; he was an eager student and an
enthusiastic patron of letters ; in private life he was
the most loyal of friends ; and when the time came
in 1343 for him to take up the ungrateful task of
statesmanship at Naples, he struggled gallantly
though ineffectually to uphold public order and
political probity amid the welter of factious intrigue
which followed the Wise King's death. Long before
the canonical age he had been appointed by John
XXII to the bishopric of Cavaillon, "a little town,"
as Petrarch describes it, "about two leagues from
Vaucluse, which as being the seat of a bishopric is
dignified with the name of city, but which has no
quality of a city except the title and its antiquity."
Vaucluse lay within the diocese of Cavaillon, and
one of the Bishop's official residences was a castle
perched on the crags which overhang the valley.
Here Petrarch paid his respects to Philip, who was

f*-^

^

84 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

a year his junior in age, and the two men, mutually
attracted by each other's great quahtics. contracted
an intimacy, which soon ripened into one of thi
closest and most valuable of Petrarch's frlendshi]
Philip "loved him not only with a Bishop's love,
Ambrose loved Augustine, but with that of
brother." and his affection was repaid in full. The
friends spent hours In each other's society, entering
each other's houses unannounced, and using each
, other's books as a common possession. To Philip
I Petrarch dedicated the De Vita Solitaria, and he
was one of the very few friends ever permitted to
isee the poet's compositions in the rough.

Another motive, of which Petrarch preserved no
record, may have contributed to his wish for partial
retirement from Avignon. In this year {1337), an
illegitimate son was born to him. Of his fault
much has been said: in some It has aroused genuine

L indignation, in others a base satisfaction at the
lapses of a devout and passionate soul ; of his
punishment and repentance those know best who
have studied his writings most closely and read his
character most accurately. To a man of his physical
habit temptation came with its fullest force ; is it
not punishment enough that to a man of his
spiritual temperament penitence was an agony of
the soul.-" We do not know who was Giovanni's
mother ; there is reason to suppose that she was a
person of humble origin, and that she was also the
mother of his daughter Francesca, born to him six
years later ; we do know that after the birth of the
latter child, while Petrarch was still under forty, he
- ^^- ^M^ _-_

'^

der forty, he 1

A

ROME AND VAUCLUSE

85

regained control of his passions, and that his subse-
quent life was free from stain. He was punished
also, as we shall see later, by the conduct of the
boy, conduct which was probably aggravated by
the father's injudicious handling of a stubborn and
perverse disposition, and by mutual misunderstand-
ing due to the inherent difficulty of their relations.
Petrarch's very conscientiousness made the mis-
chief worse ; he feh himself deeply responsible for
Giovanni's character and education ; though he did
not call the boy by the name of son, he procured him
letters of legitimacy, and never hesitated to acknow-
ledge his own fault, if the acknowledgment was
necessary for Giovanni's preferment. He spent in-
finite pains, too, on training the boy in liberal learning ;
in return he unhappily demanded a pliancy foreign to
Giovanni's nature, and any father who would learn
how to deter a son from the path in which he
wishes him to walk has only to study the history of
Petrarch and Giovanni. It is the melancholy story
of two persons connected by no tie except that
of natural kinship, which, if it does not inspire
community of tastes and mutual affection, will surely
aggravate and embitter the disagreement of their ,
tempers. Doubtless the boy was most to blame ; '
he was constitutionally idle, perverse, and sullen. I
But it is evident enough that his faults were
enhanced by the mismanagement of his father. To
those whose character commanded his sympathy
Petrarch was the best of friends and the most
genial of instructors, but he had neither patience
nor tact enough to overcome the difficulties of a

86

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

natural anlipalhy. Above all things, idleness and
sullenness were hateful to him ; so when Giovanni
was idle, he lectured him and teased him with
instances of exemplary diligence, or tried to rouse
him out of the sulks by sermonising, or, worst of
all, by sarcasm and ridicule. Conscientiously he
tried to do his duty ; but the more he tried the
worse he blundered, and it is hardly surprising that
the boy showed his worst side to his father, while
some of Petrarch's friends discerned in him through
all his faults a promise of better things.

On April 17th, 1338, during a visit to Avignon,
he had the inestimable joy of recovering the beauti-
ful MS. of Virgil which had been one of the treas-
ures of his father's library, and had been stolen
from him in 1326. We do not know the circum-
stances in which he regained possession of it, further
than that his own note on the fly-leaf speaks of its
" restitution," which seems to point to a voluntary
act on the part of its unlawful possessor. Precious
as is the codex itself, this fly-leaf is more precious
still, for on it in Petrarch's beautiful handwriting
(a kind of delicate black-letter, which cannot have
been taken by Aldus, as tradition asserts, for the
model of his cursive type) are recorded the dates of
his first meeting with Laura and of her death,
together with the deaths of his son Giovanni, of
Socrates, and of many other friends. Surely a more
pathetic document was never penned in the whole
'; course of literary history. From the date of its
recovery this cherished volume accompanied its
owner everywhere ; and on its ily-Ieaf, the page

ROME AND VAUCLUSE 87

which his eye would see oftener than any other, he
"set down a record of the cruel events, not without
a bitter sweetness in the remembrance of them."
Some time after Petrarch's death the book became
the property of Gian-Galeazzo Visconti, and was j
kept at Pavia till the submission of that city to the
French King's troops in 1499, when Antonio Pirro
saved it from the plunderers ; from him it passed
through several hands till it was bought by Cardinal
Borromeo, who presented it to the Ambrosian
Library at Milan. Napoleon stole it, but in 181 5
it was restored to Milan, and is still one of the chief,
treasures of the library. j

About this time Petrarch came in contact with
Humbert II, the last Dauphin of Vienne. The im-
pending outbreak of war between France and
England placed this Prince in a position of em-
barrassment, for he owed homage both to the
Emperor and to the King of France. The former
summoned him to help his ally. King Edward III,
the latter to join the French force against the Eng-
lish. The Dauphin's chief anxiety seems to have
been to keep out of the fighting ; an old chronicler
describes him as having the air and manners of a
woman ; and his double allegiance furnished a not
unwelcome pretext. Instead of joining either party,
he established himself at Avignon, where the Pope
had assigned him a house, and employed himself
in prosecuting a lawsuit with the Archbishop of
Vienne. Cardinal Colonna got Petrarch to write
him a letter exhorting him to take up arms for
Philip, but the peaceful disposition of the Dauphin

88 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

was proof against the poet's eloquence. He stayed
at Pont du Sorgue and prosecuted his lawsuit. It
was probably with him that Petrarch and his brother
Gherardo made an expedition to the Ste. Beaume,
or cave of St Mary Magdalene, near Marseilles.
A man " whose high position far transcended his
prudence," Petrarch tells us, a great personage whose
society was not at all pleasing to him, frequently
pressed him to accompany him on this expedition.
Petrarch as constantly refused till Cardinal Colonna
backed the great man's request ; the poet then
yielded, and some devotional Latin verses of
mediocre quality were the fruit of his visit to this
sacred but fearsome cavern. For his brother
Gherardo the journey proved more notable : he
took advantage of it to visit for the first time the
Carthusian monastery of Montrieu. in which some
years later he was to take the vows.

About this time also Petrarch had the happiness
of renewing his friendship with Azzo da Correggio
and Gulielmo da Pastrengo. Their mission to
Avignon was the result of one of those family feuds
ending in murder so frequent in the history of the
Italian despots. Mastino della Scala had taken
possession of Lucca in defiance of the treaty rights
of the Florentines; his cousin Bartolommeo, Bishop
of Verona, was accused, truly or falsely, of a con-
spiracy to murder him and hand over Lucca to the
allied troops of Florence and Venice. Azzo da
Correggio was the accuser, and on August 6th,
1338, Mastino, probably accompanied by Azzo, met
the Bishop on the steps of the cathedral and

I

I

1HK ItlMTlS OV IHK SCALIIJEKI,

J

ROME AND VAUCLUSE

S9

Stabbed him to death. Then he sent off Azzo in
hot haste as his ambassador to the Pope to obtain
absolution, and associated Gulielmo and another
lawyer with him as his advocates.

They reached Avignon in September, and Pet-
rarch, hearing of their arrival, came over from
Vaucluse to see them. But hardly had he reached
Avignon when a frenzy of emotion overmastered
him ; the sight of the city brought back the wild
tumult of his passions ; he could not stay, but fled
back to Vaucluse, and a day or two afterwards
wrote to tell Gulielmo the cause of his absence.
The violent mood soon passed, no doubt, and he
renewed the habit of which he speaks in this letter,
of " revisiting this ill-omened city and returning
voluntarily into the snare to which no hook of
necessity drew him." The ambassadors stayed a
whole year at Avignon, and the friends met fre-
quently both there and at Vaucluse. In September,
'339. the Pope formally absolved Mastino, and the
envoys returned to Italy.

The year 1339 is notable too for Petrarch's first
meeting with the Abbot Barlaam, under whom three
years later he made an ineffectual attempt at learning
Greek. Barlaam was a native of Calabria, but had
lived most of his life in Salonika and Constanti-
nople, where he was Abbot of the monastery of St.
Gregory. He is described by Boccaccio as a man
of diminutive stature but huge learning ; as a theo-
logical disputant he had made bitter enemies at Con-
stantinople, but just now he was in high favour witli
the Court, and the Emperor Andronicus had sent him

90 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

to Avignon on one of those futile missions which
had for pretext the reunion of the Churches, and for
real object an inquiry whether the West could be
cajoled into helping the East with men or money.

Petrarch has left some delightful accounts of his
life at Vaucluse, but most of these refer to the
second and third periods of his sojourn there, and
will be noticed later. There is evidence enough,
however, to show that this first period too was one
of intense literary activity, pursued in a life of rustic
frugality. " Long would be the story," he writes,
"if I went on to tell what 1 did there through many
and many a year. This is the sum of it, that almost
every one of the poor works which have come from
my pen was either completed, begun, or planned
there. . . . The very aspect of the place suggested
to me that I should attempt my bucolic poetry, a
woodland work, and the two books upon the life of
solitude . . . and as I wandered among those hills
on a certain Friday in Holy Week I hit upon the
thought, which proved a fruitful one, of writing a
poem in heroic verse about the great Scipio Afri-
canus the Elder, whose name, I know not why, had
been dear to me from my boyhood." In addition
to all these compositions, there is good reason to
think that his earlier years at Vaucluse saw at least
I the beginning of his greatest prose work, the Lives
\ of Illustrious Men; and if he wanted a change from
original composition, there were always his classical
manuscripts lying ready to his hand for the careful
annotation which reveals to us the wide range and
the thoroughness of his reading.

i

ROME AND VAUCLUSE

91

As evidence of his manner of life, take the follow-
ing delightful note in which he invites Cardinal
Colonna to sup with him : " You will come a long-
hoped-for guest to supper, and will remember that
we have no market of dainties here. A poet's
banquet awaits you, and that not of Juvenal's or
Flaccus' kind, but the pastoral sort that Virgil
describes : ' mellow apples, soft chestnuts, and rich
store of milky curd.' The rest is harder fare:
a coarse, stiff loaf, a chance hare, or a migratory
crane— and that very seldom ; or perhaps you will
6nd the chine of a strong- flavoured boar. Why
make a long story ? You know the roughness of
both place and fare, and so 1 bid you come with
shoes not only on your feet, but, as the parasite in
Plautus wittily says, on your teeth too."

CHAPTER V

THE CROWN OF SONG

PETRARCH had not yet reached his thirty-
seventh birthday when he won the object of
his highest ambition — the Crown of Song. The
bestowal of this laurel wreath was an ancient custom
last observed in Rome in the case of the poet Statius.
who received the bays from Domitian as the prize
of a contest of "music and gymnastic." Though
twelve centuries had elapsed since that event, the
memory of the custom still survived : Dante had
coveted the crown in vain, and Petrarch from his
earliest manhood made no secret of his eager desire
to win it. He was attracted by its historical con-
nection with old Rome, by the picturesque nature
of the ceremony, above all by the public recognition
of the recipient's mastery in the art of poetry. He
was no dilettante scribbler, no amateur of letters
desirous of the palm without the dust ; he was
willing, nay eager, to live laborious days, and to
spend himself and his substance in the pursuit of
learning. But he cared dearly too for the reward
so hardly earned; he longed for the applause of men
(lualified to appreciate him ; he was athirst for fame.
Even his thirst mu.st have been assuaged when on

THE CROWN OF SONG

93

one and the same day, September tst, 1340, he
received letters from Rome ;ind from Paris offering
him the object of his desire. He wrote that very
evening to Cardinal Colonna asking his advice as
to which invitation he should accept. " I am at the
parting of two roads," he said to the Cardinal,
"and I stand hesitating and knowing not which I
had better take ; it is a short story, but wonderful
enough. To-day about nine o'clock I received a
letter from the Senate summoning me in pressing
terms and with much persuasion to Rome to receive
the crown of song. To-day also, about four o'clock,
a message reached me with a letter on the same
subject from the illustrious Robert, Chancellor of
the University of Paris, my fellow-citizen, and a
firm friend to me and my fortunes. He urges me
with carefully chosen reasons to go to Paris. Who
could ever have suspected, I ask you, that such a
thing would happen among these rocks and hills?
In fact, the thing is so incredible that I send you
both the letters with the seals uninjured. The one
summons came in the morning, the other in the
evening ; and you will see how weighty are the
arguments which appeal to me on either side. Now
since joy suits ill with deliberation, I own that I am
as much perplexed in mind as joyful at my good
fortune. On one side is the attraction of novelty,
on the other veneration for antiquity ; on the one
my friend, on the other my country. One thing
indeed weighs heavily in the latter scale, that the
King of Sicily is in Italy, whom of all men I can
most readily accept as judge of my ability. You

94 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

/ ali the

ihouglits

vaves that toss i
who have not scorned to put your hand to their
helm, will direct by your counsel the stormy passage
of my mind."

Petrarch would hardly have asked the Cardinal's
advice if he had not been sure of the answer. To
balance the claims of Rome and Paris was a pretty
literary exercise ; but in his judgment Paris kicked
the beam. Rome was for him the world's capital,
whose offer of the crown proclaimed him the
world's poet ; in Rome he meant to be crowned,
and to Rome Cardinal Colonna advised him to go.

On the way he would visit Naples. Robert the
Wise, titular King of Jerusalem and the Two
Sicilies, had long been one of his heroes. He
wrote of him as "that consummate king and philo-
sopher, equally illustrious in letters and in dominion,
unique among the kings of our day as a friend of
knowledge and of virtue." And Robert deserved
high praise. He had his faults, though Petrarch
did not sec them. He reminds us a little of our
British Solomon, who stands at the close of the
Renaissance as Robert stands at its opening, a king
eager to be reputed wise, whose statesmanship was
too often mere statecraft, and whose learning bore
the taint of pedantry. But the compjirison with
James is grievously unjust to Robert ; his faults, if
like in kind, were less in degree, and he had what
the Stuart lacked — the saving grace of magnanimity.
There was nothing petty about him. His title
" King of Jerusalem" was a mere reminiscence of
an episode in history; of the Two Sicilies the island

/-^

THE CROWN OF SONG 95

kinfrdom had passed under the sway of the
Aragonese ; but the realm of Naples throve under
his rule, and carried weight in European politics
out of all proportion to its natural resources. As
a skilful diplomatist and a prudent ruler Robert
earned his surname of "the Wise."

He earned it still better as a friend of learning;
the greatest of his services to his age and country
lay in his treatment of artists and men of letters.
The brilliant and versatile Emperor Frederick 11
had lived with poets as comrades, not as depen-
dents ; Robert followed this forgotten example, and
made it the fashion. He received Petrarch not as
a client, but as a friend; under colour of "examin-
ing " him, he organised a public display of the
poet's prowess, and lavished on him every possible
token of friendship and esteem. By this reception
of Petrarch, Robert enthroned intellect in the face
of Europe.

Petrarch's journey from Provence, his stay in
Naples, and his coronation in Rome occupied nearly
two months ; there is some conflict of evidence as
to the exact dates of his movements, and even as to
the day of the coronation, but the following narra-
tive gives what seems to be the most probable
account. Accompanied by Azzo da Correggio, he
left Avignon on February i6th, 1341, and took
ship at Marseilles. The friends reached Naples
early in March, and remained there as the guests of
King Robert till the beginning of April. Day after
day Petrarch and the King had long conferences,
at which they discussed poetry, history, and philo-

96 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

sophy; personal intercourse licightcned their mutual
admiration, and the poet's enthusiasm knew no
bounds when Robert declared to him that he valued
learning and letters above the crown of Naples
itself. Then came the examination alluded to
above, surely the longest vivS voce on record, when
Robert assembled his whole Court, and for two
days and a half propounded question after question
in every known branch of learning. All these the
poet seems to have answered to the satisfaction of
his audience, and on the third day Robert solemnly
pronounced him worthy of the laurel crown, and
offered to confer it on him with his own hand in
Naples. But Petrarch was loyal to Rome ; only in
the Capitol would he receive the supreme distinc-
tion ; and Robert respected a preference of which he
fully understood the motive. It was only his age,
he declared, and not his royal rank, that prevented
him from going himself to Rome for the occasion.
Feeling himself unequal to the journey, he appointed
the accomplished knight Giovanni Barili, a favourite
officer of his household, to act as his deputy, wrote
letters testifying to Petrarch's worthiness to receive
the laurel, and gave him his own purple robe to
wear at the ceremony.

With Barili Petrarch formed a lasting friendship,
and to this Neapolitan visit he owed also a still
closer intimacy with Marco Barbato, the Chancellor
of the kingdom, a native of Ovid's birthplace
Sulmo, himself a man of letters and a poet, "ex-
cellent in talent, and still more excellent in life."
The warmth of Petrarch's friendship for Barbato

J

THE CROWN OF SONG

97

I

is testified by a number of letters couched in terms
of confidence and affection, and by the dediaition
to him of the Latin poetical letters. Yet they
met only twice in twenty-two years; and from
1343 to Barbato's death in 1363 their intercourse
was carried on entirely by correspondence. Their
friendship furnishes an interesting example of a
sympathy which twenty years of absence could not
weaken.

On April 2nd Barili and his attendants left
Naples, and either then or two days later Petrarch
and Azzo set out in turn by a different route for
Rome. They arrived safely on Good Friday, the
6th, and were received by Orso and the members
of the Colonna family present in the city ; but when
they inquired for Barili, no news of him could be
heard. Hastily they sent out a courier to scour
the country ; but Easter Eve passed without tidings
of the King's envoy, who had in fact fallen into the
hands of banditti near Anagni, and was detained
their prisoner for several days. The coronation
could not be deferred beyond Easter Sunday, for
on the close of that day Orso's senatorship came to
an end, and it was essential that Petrarch should
be crowned while the Chief Magistracy was still
held by one of his friends. Early on Easter morn-
ing, therefore, April Sth, trumpeters summoned the
populace to the Capitol. The novelty of the '
spectacle, resumed after an interval of centuries,
the splendour and pomp of the pageant, probably
also the newly awakened zeal for art and letters,
drew a vast crowd of onlookers, whose enthusiastic '

I

98 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

applause drowned, at least for the moment, the
voices of envy and detraction. Here, in Rome,
they were met to do honour to the poet and scholar
whose enthusiasm for their city was to be the key-
note of the new learning, who was to revive and
popularise the memories of her glorious past, and to
claim anew for her, in these days of her desertion by
Pope and Emperor, the indefeasible right to rule
the world.

Of the ceremony itself we have few details ; but
from what we know we can infer that it was worthy
of the occasion. Twelve boys, richly dressed in
scarlet, led the way ; they were all fifteen years of
age, and were chosen from twelve of the noblest
Roman families. After them, clad in green and
crowned with flowers, came six of the principal
nobles of the city, Petrarch's old friend Paolo Anni-
baldi being one of them ; and in the midst of this
distinguished escort walked Petrarch himself, wear-
ing the purple robe of the King of Naples. After
him came the Senator escorted by the chief func-
tionaries of the city, and we may be sure that a
procession in which the leading men of Rome and
their sons took part was not lacking in either the
number of its attendants or the brilliance of its
pageantry. When they reached the top of the
Capitoline Hill a herald summoned Petrarch to
speak. He saluted the people, and, taking a verse
of Virgil for his text, gave an elaborate discourse
on the difficulties, delights, and rewards of poetry,
concluding with a prayer that the Senator, as repre-
sentative of the Roman people, would be pleased to

U

THE CROWN OF SONG

99

bestow on him the crown of which the King of
" Sicily " had judged him worthy. Then he knelt
down before Orso, who placed the laurel crown on
his head and declared aloud that he gave it him
as the reward of distinguished merit. After this
Petrarch recited a sonnet, which has not been pre-
served) in remembrance of the heroes of old Rome,
and the veteran Stefano Colonna spoke a glowing
eulogy of the newly crowned poet.

This ended the ceremony on the Capitol. It
seems to have been purely civic in its character, for
no hint is given of any ecclesiastical rite or function
in connection with it. But Petrarch was of all men
least likely to forget the claims of religion ; very
great as might be his elation at the recognition of
his genius and his work, he remembered in the hour
of his triumph to give God the glory. The pro-
cession reformed and escorted him to St. Peter's,
where he publicly gave thanks for the honour con-
ferred on him, and left his laurel crown to hang
among the votive offerings of the cathedral. The
day ended with a banquet in his honour, and the
presentation to him by Orso of a diploma testifying
to his excellence in the arts of poetry and history,
authorising him to leach and dispute in public and
to publish books at his pleasure, and conferring
upon him the citizenship of Rome in recognition of
his loyal devotion to her interests.

Thus ended a day notable not only in the life of
its hero, but in the history of letters. It is prob- i
ably true that Petrarch owed this conspicuous j
honour as much to the partiality of his friends as to 1

loo PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

the general recognition of his services. The best of
his work was still to be done ; he himself in old
age, looking back on this most brilliant day of his

life, admitted with evidei

that the leaves

imcerity

of his laurel crown were immature, and that a not
unnatural result of its reception was to bring upon
I him much envy and ill-will. It was by his Italian
I poetry that he was chiefly known as yet, and we
I have seen that his Italian poetry, exquisite and in
some respects unique as are its qualities, had little
effect in the really important work of his life, the
revival of learning. In connection with that work,
it is true that he had already gained a European
reputation as an earnest and indefatigable student,
bent on accumulating knowledge, and eager to
diffuse it ; but he had as yet published little or
nothing to justify in the face of the world the high
esteem of his admirers. Still, when every allowance
has been made for personal influence, and every
possible point conceded to those who were already
carping at the honour conferred on him, the fact
remains that his coronation marks the awakening of
1 general interest in learning, the end of an age in
which letters were the exclusive possession of a
; few, and the advent of a time when even those who
did not themselves possess scholarship would owe
the tone of their thought and the tenor of their
daily life to the spirit born of the New Learning.
This is Petrarch's pre-eminent claim to the grati-
tude of humanity. He was hardly a better Latinist
than John of Salisbury; he knew less Greek than
Robert Grosseteste ; but to his efforts, and not to

THE CROWN OF SONG loi

those of any predecessor, we owe it that the culture
of the Renaissance became a living force in the
development of Europe. In this sense, our modern
life may be said to date from the ceremony on the
Capitol.

CHAPTER VI

PARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE

PETRARCH had contemplated a stay of some
few days in Rome ; in the event his visit was
prolonged a day beyond his intention. Soon after
leaving the gates he encountered one of those
hordes of banditti which infested the Romagna. and
was forced to return to the city. He started again
the next day with a stronger escort, and reached
Pisa by the end of April. Three weeks later he
rejoined Azzo and took part in his triumphal entry
into Parma. For the past two years the Correggi
had been busy with another move in that game of
intrigue of which the Lordship of Parma was the
stake. When in need of an ally against the Rossi,
they played the jackal, as we have seen, to Mastino
della Scala ; but the Lord of Verona took some-
thing more than the lion's share of the prey, and the
Correggi were not the men to be content with bare
bones. Azzo's journeys to Avignon and Naples,
which coincided so happily with Petrarch's move-
ments, were undertaken to obtain Pope Benedict's
and King Kolicrt's consent to a plan for getting
Liicliino Visconti of Milan to help in expelling
Ma.stin(i's tmopa from Parma and transferring the

PARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE 103

sovereignty of the city to Azzo and his brothers.
The Visconti were ever ready to fish in troubled
waters, and Luchino willingly promised assistance,
in return for which the Correggi secretly undertook
to hand over the sovereignty to him after four
years' enjoyment of it. It is not quite clear, nor
does it much matter, how far Benedict and Robert
were aware of this secret stipulation : it seems un-
likely that they would have sanctioned a plan for
the aggrandisement of their worst enemy ; on the
other hand, they must have known the Visconti
character too well to suspect Luchino of giving any-
thing for nothing. Probably they knew of the agree-
ment, and trusted Azzo, the arch-intriguer, to break
his promise when the time should come for perform-
ing it. Be this as it may, the bargain was struck ;
Luchino sent troops from Milan; on May 21st the
Veronese garrison was expelled, and on the 23rd
the brothers da Correggio, accompanied by Petrarch,
made their state entry into Parma amid a great
popular demonstration of joy and welcome. Prob-
ably the Veronese domination had really been
oppressive, and the bulk of the people may have
hailed the Correggi as genuine liberators ; while
those who had been too often deluded by promises
of freedom to put any further trust in princes may
have thought that, tyrant for tyrant, their own
nobles were at any rate less objectionable than a
stranger. And for a year or two things went well
in Parma ; while Azzo and his brothers remained
of one mind, they employed their brilliant talents in
the work of government, and really did much to

104 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

lighten the burdens and improve the administration
of the State.
I Everything therefore promised well for the
I happiness of Petrarch's first sojourn in Parma,
. which was to last about a year. But not even
Azzo's companionship could keep him permanently
in the town ; mountain and woodland called him
with an irresistible charm ; and on the great spurs
of the Apennines above Reggie, where the River
Enza flows down from Canossa to the plain, he
found a pleasant summer refuge from the heat and
dust of the city. Either in the little village of
Ciano or in a neighbouring castle owned by the
Correggi, he spent a great part of the summer ; and
here one day, as he wandered in the wood which
then bore the name of Silva Plana, he suddenly be-
thought him of the poem begun some years ago in
the solitude of Vaucluse. Eagerly he resumed the
interrupted work, composing a few lines on the
spot, and going on with it every day till his return
to Parma. Arrived there, he hired a quiet and
secluded little house and garden, situated on the
outskirts of the city, which pleased him so well that
he bought it a few years later. Here he applied
himself to his Africa with such vigour that in an
incredibly short time the nine books of the poem
were complete.

Doubtless his coronation acted as a sharp stimulus
to his powers ; the excitement of so unique an
honour, and the desire to justify to himself and to
the world the renown which he enjoyed, might well
have stirred a less sensitive and less impetuous

I

I

PARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE 105

nature to extraordinary efforts. Certain it is that
the years immediately following the coronation were
years of incessant literary work ; and it is to the
period between 1341 and 1361 that we owe the
great bulk of the compositions which may be called
the first-fruits of Humanism. Some estimate of the
literary value and effect of these compositions will
be attempted In a later chapter ; here it Is sufficient
to note that the crowning honour of Petrarch's life
produced in him not a sense of satiety or content-
ment with repose, but, on the contrary, a livelier
and keener ambition, a noble eagerness to deserve
the fame which the world had already awarded him.
Those who cannot see beneath the superficial flaws
of a character may speak contemptuously of his
vanity, his affectations, and his greed of fame ; far
other is the estimate of those who have read his
heart and know the high idealism, the insatiable
appetite for toil, and the profound sense of devotion
to his calling, which lay beneath these insignificant
and not unlovable foibles.

A remarkable and touching Illustration of his
celebrity is furnished by the visit of an old blind
grammarian, a native of Perugia, who kept a school
at Pontremoli, and who made his way at this time
to Parma solely for the pleasure of spending a few
hours in the company of the poet, of whose corona-
tion he had heard, and from whose scholarship he
anticipated, what indeed it was chiefly instrumental
in producing, a great awakening of the mind of
Europe.

Over this bright life of honoured work, pursued

io6 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

alternately in happy solitude and in the still hap[M
companionship of friends, there soon came a clca
of heavy sorrow ; during this summer Peti
heard of the death of the friend of his undal
graduate days, the poet Tommaso Caloria
Messina ; and in the month of September he 1
to bear a still more lamentable loss. News h3ii\
reached him that Giacomo Colonna was ill all
Lombez ; and one night he dreamed that he saitl
him walking alone and hurriedly on the bank of al
little stream in his garden at Parma; he hastened!
to meet him, and poured out question after question!
as to how he came there, and whence and whither I
he was going; Giacomo, he thought, smiled brightly I
as of old, and said, " Do you remember how you ]
hated the storms in the Pyrenees when you lived
with me on the Garonne ? I am now worn out by
them, and am going away from them to Rome,
never to return." Petrarch in his dream would
have joined himself to his friend, but Giacomo
waved him affectionately away, and then in a more
decided tone said, " Stop, I will not have you this
time for a companion." Then Petrarch noticed the
bloodless pallor of his face and knew that he was
dead, and woke with his own cry of grief and
horror still ringing in his ears. Nearly a month later
came messengers from Provence with the tidings
that Giacomo had died at the very time when
Petrarch had thus seen him in a dream.

The new year (1342) brought him yet a third
bereavement by the death at Naples of Fra Dionigi
da Borgo San Sepolcro, for whom King Robert

F

fPARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE 107

had three years previously obtained the bishopric
of Monopoh'. Fra Dionigi's influence was the
strongest ever brought to bear on Petrarch's mind
and character ; as we have seen, he knew how to
foster his penitent's religious enthusiasm without
impairing his zeal for secular learning, and to his
wise advice it must be largely due that Petrarch
neither sacrificd his intellect on the altar of fanati-
cism, nor forgot the Christian faith in reviving
Augustan culture.

In the spring of this year, "sorely against the
grain," he bade farewell to Italy and returned to
Avignon. We know neither the precise date nor
the compelling cause of his return, but it has been
plausibly conjectured that Cardinal Colonna sum-
moned him back, and that the summons may have
had some connection with the Pope's last illness.
Benedict XII died on April 25th, and on May 7th
Pierre Roger was elected to succeed him and took
the name of Clement VI, The election was a
victory for the French party, but the new Pope was
no bitter partisan ; his official name was not ill-
chosen as an index to his character ; he was a
"douce" man, self-indulgent to the point of laxity,
incapable of saying No to friend or nephew, but
incapable also of rancour, amiable in disposition,
cultivated in mind, and if not quite a scholar, at
least an intelligent amateur of scholarship. Petrarch
speaks of him as " an accomplished man of letters,
but overwhelmed with business, and therefore a
devourer of digests." Their first meeting may have
occurred in connection with an embassy from Rome,

ro8 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

which will be more fully noticed in the next chapter;
however this may be, the new Pope soon proved
himself a good friend to Petrarch. "Clement added
to my fortunes," the latter tells us ; and we shall
see that the addition consisted of no less than four
benefices conferred on himself and one on his son,
besides an informal offer of the papal secretaryship,
which was declined. To the first of these benefices,
the priory of St. Nicolas of Miliarino, In the diocese
of Pisa, Petrarch was appointed on October 6th,
1342-

But it is characteristic of him that the first use he
made of Clement's favour was to obtain preferment
for a friend. Barlaam, the "little man of huge
learning," had come back as a theological refugee to
Avignon. He was a poor Latinist, being a native
of Calabria, where to this day the peasants speak a
patois as much Greek as Latin in its origin.
Petrarch knew no Greek at all, and was acutely
conscious of this defect in his training. The two
friends started a course of mutual instruction ; but
before Petrarch had time to make any appreciable
progress, the bishopric of Geraci, in Calabria, fell
vacant, and he persuaded the Pope to bestow it on
Barlaam ; and so, in his own words, "deprived him-
self of the leader under whom he had begun
campaigning with no small hope of success."

1 1 is too much to say with one of his biographers
that this lost opportunity prevented him from found-
ing the Renaissance on a Greek instead of a Latin
basis : his predilection for all things Roman would,
we may be sure, have prevented him from giving

A

1=

PARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE 109

the preference to Greek literature, however deeply
he might have felt its charm ; but it is permissible to
suppose that, if he and Boccaccio had been as pro-
ficient in Greek scholarship as they were enthusiastic
for it, the full glory of the Renaissance might have
been antedated by a generation.

Greek, then, had to be given up ; but with
Petrarch the surrender of one study meant closer
application to others ; he was incapable of idleness,
and the winter months, spent mostly at Vaucluse,
but with frequent visits to Avignon, were a time of
incessant mental activity. Many of the Italian
poems are referable to this period, and he was prob-
ably working also on the Lives 0/ Illustrious Men.
[But above all this sojourn at Vaucluse is notable ,
for the writing of the three dialogues On Despising
the World, which to those who feel the charm of /
Petrarch's nature and the intense humanity of his '
character are the most fascinating of all his writings.
He called them his Scerelum; in the form of dialogues
between Saint Augustine and himself he took the
Saint, as it were, for his confessor, and laid bare to
him his inmost hearL The dialogues give as faith-
ful a portrait as a man may hope to paint of his
iwn personality ; the light of them penetrates the
veil and makes visible to us the mechanism of the
soul. We see the Humanist, self-conscious, self-
questioning, taking himself, as it were, for audience,
and expressing even his solitary musings through
ordered forms of rhetoric ; but beneath this surface
aspect we see even more clearly the passionate soul,
icarnest in thought, sincere in faith, nobly tenacious

no PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

of its ideals ; and through all the rhetoric of balanced
question and answer rings the note of genuine
emotion. Very likely Petrarch may have foreseen
the probability that these dialogues would be pub-
lished after his death ; very likely he may even have
found pleasure in the idea that posterity would one
day look deep into his heart. None the less in
writing them he meant to be his own sole and
sincere confidant during his lifetime ; they were
truly his Secreium; and the elaboration of their style
is due less to their author's habitual craving to
deserve and win renown, than to his instinctive
feeling that the deep matters of the soul demand
the utmost pains that the artist can bestow on their
interpretation.

The interest of the Secretutn quickens to pathos
when we find that its composition synchronises with
Petrarch's last battle and final victory over his
natural frailty. In the spring of 1343 his daughter
Francesca was born ; thenceforward, as he tells us,
while still in the full vigour of manhood, be became
master of his passions, and lived free from the sin
which he had always loathed. He bestowed the same
conscientious care on Francesca's nurture as on
Giovanni's, and with far happier results; gifted with
an amiable disposition, and trained apparently by
judicious guardians, the girl grew up to be the chief
solace and delight of her father's latter years.

From his quiet scholar's life at Vaucluse Petrarch
was presently recalled to the world of politics and
intrigue by the lamentable course of events at
Naples. King Robert died full of years and of

J

I

PARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE iii

honour in January. 1343, and immediately his king-
dom sank into indescribable anarchy and corruption.
It was as if the Wise King, like the physician in
Foe's horrible story of arrested decomposition, had
been able to galvanise the dead body-politic, but
only with the result that, as soon as his controlling
power was withdrawn, the accumulated foulness of
years became manifest in an instant. Robert's heir
was his granddaughter Joanna, a girl of sixteen,
married in her childhood to her cousin Prince
Andrew of Hungary, who was only a year her
senior. Once again a parallel suggests itself be-
tween the House of Stuart and the Angevin House
of the Two Sicilies. In Naples, as in Scotland, we
have a young queen of wilful temper and un-
governed passions ; a consort of mean abilities and
dissolute inclinations ; presently a murder, of which
the husband is the victim, and the wife is commonly
believed to be an accomplice, if not the instigator.
Certain it is that she made indecent haste to marry
her paramour, whose brother was the actual mur-
derer. The tragedy, in the earlier as in the later
case, took time to work out, and Petrarch could
have no more than a vague suspicion of doom im-
pending over his old patron's family when he paid
his second visit to the city ; but already there was
more than enough to disgust him as a man and
distress him as an Italian patriot.

The voyage began with an omen of misfortune.
Starting by sea, he was shipwrecked off Nice, and
seems to have continued his journey by land. On
October 4th he reached Rome ; on the 6th he went

112 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

with Stefano Colonna the Elder to Praeneste, as the
guest of Stefano 's grandson Giovanni ; on the 12th
he arrived at Naples. The primary object of his
mission was to treat for the release from prison of
some turbulent friends of the Colonna family, who
had got the worst of a conspiracy ; but as the
Pope's envoy he would naturally be expected to
report on the situation, and two letters to Cardinal
Colonna paint a gloomy picture. Power was in the
hands of an unscrupulous Hungarian friar, a man of
abandoned life and filthy habits, who by the irony
of chance bore the name of Robert, as if to point
the contrast with the Wise King whose heritage he
misruled. Supported by a cabal of intriguers male
and female, "this fierce inhuman beast oppresses
the lowly, spurns justice, and pollutes all authority
human and divine." Foreseeing something of what
might happen after his death, King Robert had
appointed Philip de Cabassoles head of a Council of
Regency, which should hold office till Queen Joanna
completed her twenty-fifth year; he now "alone
embraces the side of forlorn justice ; but what can
one lamb do amid such a pack of wolves?" Property
and life were alike insecure ; the very Council
" must end its sittings at the approach of evening,
for the turbulent young nobles make the streets
quite unsafe after dark. And what wonder if they
are unruly and society corrupt, when the public
authorities actually countenance all the horrors of
gladiatorial games ? This disgusting exhibition
takes place in open day before the Court and popu-
lace, in this city of Italy, with more than barbaric

I

PARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE 113

ferocity." Knowing nothing of what he was to see,
Petrarch was taken to a spectacle attended by the
sovereigns in state ; suddenly to his horror he saw
a beautiful youth, killed for pastime, expiring at his
feet, and putting spurs to his horse fled at full gallop
from the place.

His mission was a failure; he argued the prisoners'
case before the Council, and on pne occasion came
very near succeeding ; but the Council broke up
without coming to a decision. Indirect influence
seemed equally unsuccessful: "the elder Queen
pities, but declares herself powerless ; Cleopatra
and her Ptolemy might take compassion if their
Photinus and Achillas gave them leave." Eventu-
ally the men were set at liberty, but not till after
Petrarch had left the city, and then only through
the young Queen's personal Intercession.

" Cleopatra " honoured her grandfather's friend
personally, and appointed him her chaplain ; but
this was poor compensation for the misery of wit-
nessing the ruin of Naples. A far greater consola-
tion was the companionship of his friends Barbato
and Barili, whose society he enjoyed throughout his
two months' stay, and with whom he made long and
delightful excursions in the surrounding country.

From the horrors of Naples, of which an appal-
ling storm in the bay was perhaps the least, Petrarch
fled away in December to Parma. Here too he
was in a focus of intrigue ; but the city was now
his Italian home, where he could live his own life and
pursue his studies at his pleasure. Moreover, the
intrigues here, however much fighting they might

114 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

entail, were conducted according to the usages of
polite society, and the arch-intriguer was his friend.

The chronology of the next two years is so diffi-
cult, that even Fracassetti, the indefatigable editor
and annotator of the Letters, has made mutually
inconsistent statements with regard to it; the follow-
ing version is given with some diffidence as best
fitting in with the ^nown facts and dates.

Petrarch reached Parma about Christmas, 1343,
and stayed there till February, 1345 ; of his doings
there we have no record. The times were troublous;
the brothers da Correggio were quarrelling ; and
Azzo, rather than surrender the sovereignty as
promised to Luchino Visconti. sold it to the
Marquis of Ferrara. Thereupon Milan and Mantua
formed a league, and in November, 1344, their
allied forces laid siege to Parma. For three months
Petrarch endured the disquiet and discomfort of life
in a beleagured town; then "a great longing for
his transalpine Helicon came upon him, since his
Italian Helicon was ablaze with war," and he deter-
mined to break out at all hazards. About sunset
on February 24th he and a few companions sallied
forth unarmed from the city ; about midnight they
were near Reggio, a stronghold of the enemy.
Here they fell In with armed banditti, who threatened
their lives ; unable to resist, they fled at top speed
in different directions through the darkness. Pet-
rarch was just congratulating himself on his escape,
when his horse fell at some obstacle, and he was
thrown heavily to the ground, half stunned, and so
badly bruised on one arm that it was !

s some days I

PARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE 115

before he could put his hand to his mouth. As
soon as possible he recovered his horse, and pre-
sently found a few of his companions ; the rest had
ridden back to Parma. The night was pitch dark,
and rain and hail fell in torrents, so that the little
party were forced to take shelter under their horses'
bellies. When the dawn came, they travelled by
by-ways to Scandiano, a friendly town, where they
learned that a body of the enemy had been lying in
wait to intercept them, and had only just gone back
to quarters. Here Petrarch's arm was bandaged,
and they went on to Modena, and thence, on the
following day, to Bologna.

Soon afterwards he made his way to Verona, and
here he was compensated for all recent perils and dis-
comforts by one of the biggest literary " finds " ever
vouchsafed to a book-hunter's diligence. In a church
library he came across a manuscript of Cicero's letters.
It has generally been supposed that the treasure-
trove comprised both the Familiar Letters and those
to Atticus, but there is some reason to think that only
the latter were found on this occasion. However
that may be, here was a discovery for which, even
had it stood alone, the world must have hailed
Petrarch its benefactor, and seldom has Fortune
played so happy a stroke as that by which she gave
to Cicero's most ardent and most distinguished
pupil the supreme delight of being the first to see
his master in the intimacy of private converse. The
fact that Cicero had published letters was well
known, and scholars had made eager but hitherto
fruitless search for the precious manuscripts. Now

ii6 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

at last the author to whom they all looked as
"father and chief of oratory and style" stood re-
' vealed also as the brightest of correspondents, the
wittiest of gossips, the most human of friends ; and
Petrarch noted with special delight that Cicero, like
himself, could communicate every passing thought
and share every momentary doubt with the friend
who had won his heart. He lost not a moment in
making a copy of the treasure with his own hands ;
and the discovery also inspired him with the idea of
writing the first of his two tellers to Cicero, by
which he set the fashion of embodying historical
criticism in the form of letters to dead authors.

Petrarch seems to have spent the whole summer
in Verona, Jn happy companionship with Gulielmo
da Pastrengo, and with Azzo da Correggio, who
had fled thilher on the failure of his plot in Parma.
During his stay here he probably sent for his son
Giovanni, now a boy of eight years old, and placed
him under the charge of Rinaldo da Villafranca, a
well-known professor of grammar in Verona. In
the autumn he left Verona for Avignon, and
Gulielmo accompanied him on his journey as far as
Peschiera, on the Brescian border. A letter from
Gulielmo, interesting because so few of the letters
written to Petrarch by his friends have been pre-
served, tells of their journey to the Hllle frontier
town ; the night spent almost wholly in talk, the
start before sunrise, and the affectionate parting, on
a knoll overlooking the Lago di Garda.

Nothing further is known of Petrarch's journey
back to Avignon or of the date of his arrival, except

J

PARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE

that he was certainly there by the middle of Decem-
ber; he may quite possibly have arrived a month or
two earlier.

The next two years were spent principally at
Vaucluse. As on former occasions, his life there
was diversified by frequent visits to Avignon, and
there are many signs that he was fully in touch with
the life of the Papal Court, and with the course of
events in Provence and in Italy, With Clement VI
he stood higher in favour than ever; in either 1346
or 1347 the Pope offered him the post of Papal
Secretary and Protonotary, and though Petrarch
wisely declined an honour which would have taken
him from his proper business of scholarship to over-
whelm him with the uncongenial burdens of official
correspondence and court intrigues, the refusal in
no way diminished Clement's anxiety to promote
his interests ; in October, 1346, he conferred on him
a canonry at Parma, and in 1348 gave him the
higher dignity of Archdeacon there. Once again
it is pleasant to find that Petrarch's first thought on
receiving an accession of wealth was to offer help
to a friend. It must have been about the time
of his nomination to the canonry that he wrote to
an unknown correspondent : " I heard something
the other day from one who knew about the state
of your money chest, and I have determined to be
so bold as to come to its assistance. Here then
is an offering— I will not say from the surplusage of
my fortune, for that would sound unpleasantly like
bragging, nor does the mere phrase ' Fortune's
bounty ' quite express my meaning, so I will say

ii8 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

that I have sent you a trifle from the bounties which
Fortune has deigned to heap on me, who busy not
myself with such things, beyond all expectation or
wish of mine ; and however small the gift, I doubt
not but that you will deign to accept it, and in this
little thing, as in a tiny mirror, you will see the
sender's great affection, and will weigh the magni-
tude of his goodwill against the littleness of his
gift."

Petrarch, then, maintained his place in the Pope's
favour and his connection with friends at Avignon ;
but residence in the city was as distasteful to him
as ever, and Vaucluse was his home for the next
two years. There is an undated letter to Guido
Settimo, almost certainly written at this time, in
which he speaks of himself as still suffering from
the smart of his old wound, and praying, as yet
unsuccessfully, for deliverance. The allusion is un-
mistakable ; time had done something to mitigate
the violence of his passion, but his love for Laura
was still the dominant sentiment of his heart. Vau-
cluse gave him peace ; here he found full oppor-
tunity for quiet study of books and of nature, with
just so much companionship of intimate friends as
might serve to keep his faculties alert and his affec-
tions keen. Never surely has a storm-tossed soul
taken refuge in a more perfect haven. Visit the
spot to-day, and you find a busy little township
clustered round a few mills whose wheels are driven
by the Sorgue. But it is easy to ignore the
modern buildings, to dot the lower slopes in fancy
with patches of woodland, and to picture the place

»M^

IPARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE 119

as Petrarch knew it. There has been no appreci-
able change in the apparently perfect circle of steep
hills crested with limestone crags, in the great silent
pool where the river rises under the shadow of a
cliff 350 feet high ; or in the long rock-strewn falls
through which it rushes noisily to the valley-level.
The very fig tree growing between the rocks at the
head of the cataract may be the descendant of one
from which Petrarch could offer Cardinal Colonna a
dish of figs drawn, like hisjug of drinking water, from
mid-stream. The little church may have stood on
its present site ; the Bishop of Cavaillon's castle,
now a picturesque ruin, was then an almost impreg-
nable fortress crowning a steep hill 600 feet high ;
only there was no thriving French village, but at
most a few peasants' cottages dotted about the
valley, with Petrarch's own house standing probably
on the site now occupied by one of the mills, with
his meadow bordering the stream, and his two
gardens, the upper one on the slope by the cataract,
the lower one originally perhaps a peninsula jutting
into the river-bed, and by him converted into an
island by the cutting of a little channel now utilised
as a mill-race.

Here in the years 1346 and 1347 Petrarch "waged
war with the nymphs of the Sorgue, seeking to
annex enough of their domain to build a habitation
for the Muses." Gardening gave him recreation;
for work we know with certainty that this is the
date of his treatise in two books On the Solitary
Life, which he dedicated to the Bishop of Cavaillon.
Philip watched over the composition of the treatise,

I20 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

though it was not till many years later that Petrarcb
sent him a copy of the finished work. And in 1347
a visit to his brother Gherardo at his monastery
furnished him with the subject of his essay On the
Repose of Men vowed to Religion.

It was to the troubles of Naples that Petrarch owed
the pleasure of the Bishop's society. Andrew of Hun-
gary had been murdered in September, 1 345 ; Queen
Joanna speedily married the murderer's brother, her
cousin, Prince Lewis of Tarentum ; King Lewis of
Hungary led an expedition into Italy to avenge his
brother's death ; and Philip, sick of his position as
nominal head of an ineffective Regency, left Naples
in disgust, and came back to his diocese and to his
castle above Vaucluse. Petrarch's grief at the ruin
of Naples, poured out in a letter of lamentation to
Barbato, was deep and sincere ; but in intercourse
with Philip he found perhaps an adequate com-
pensation for his distress.

In January, 1347, he had the exquisite pleasure
of taking Socrates to pay a visit to the Bishop at
Cavaillon ; the charming little letter in which he
accepted the latter's invitation deserves to be trans-
lated in full. It runs thus : —

" I will come to you at the time when I know
you will be glad to see me, and I will bring with me
our Socrates, who is your most devoted admirer.
We will come the day after to-morrow ; and we will
not shrink from the sight of a city, though we shall
be dressed in rough country clothes. For we fled
hither two days since, hurriedly and as at a bound,
from the resdess tumult of the town, like ship-

J

PARMA, NAPLES, AND VAUCLUSE 121

wrecked sailors making for shore, planning for our-
selves a time of unharried quiet, and in the dress
which seemed most appropriate for the country in
winter. You bid us betake ourselves just as we are
to your city ; we will obey all the more willingly as
we are drawn by eager longing for your com-
pany. Nor will we care greatly how our outer man
looks in your eyes, to whom we both wish and
believe that our souls stand visible and undraped.
One thing, most loving father, you will not deny
to the wishes of your friends : if you wish to have
us often as your guests, you will let us share no
special banquet of dainties, but your usual meal.
Farewell."

CHAPTER VII

ROME AND RIENZI

PETRARCH'S life was full of startling contrasts
and sharp surprises ; but in all his career's
vicissitudes no external event ever stirred his
emotions quite so violently as the Roman crisis of
1347. The gardener of Vaucluse, the philosophical
essayist on saints and hermits, the poet of a tran-
quillised but constant devotion, became in an instant
the fervid politician, the people's champion, the
prophet of a revolution. The society in which he
lived was hostile to his ideals ; he cared not whom
he offended by his advocacy of them ; his patron
and lifelong friend was of the opposite faction ;
even gratitude and friendship must give place to
the patriot's zeal ; blows were being struck for
Rome, and with all his soul Petrarch believed that
the cause of Rome was the cause of God.

Fully to comprehend the high hopes excited in
him by Rienzi, the hot enthusiasm with which he
championed the Tribune in the face of a sceptical
and unfriendly world, and the bitterness of his
disappointment when the cynics were justified
of their unbelief, and the gallant enterprise failed
like any base intrigue of faction, we must realise

ROME AND RIENZI

123

how all his ideals of government and all his
hopes of progress were based and centred in the
eagerly desired restoration of Roman supremacy.
From his father he inherited the political creed of
the White Guelfs expounded by Dante in the De
Monarchid. Pope and Emperor were alike the
consecrated vice-gerents of God on earth ; each in
his allotted sphere must rule the spiritual and
temporal world in conformity with the Divine Will ;
both were " Holy Roman," and both, as Petrarch
insisted more fervently than any of his predecessors,
must regard Rome as their capital city, and must
have a special care of Italy, "the Garden of the
Empire." Their authority over distant provinces
might be delegated to vicars and vassals ; but Italy
was their home, the motherland of the imperial
race, in whose chief city resided, dormant perhaps
but indefeasible, the right to rule the world ; and
both Pope and Emperor were bound to make the
government of Italy their chief and personal care.
In all this there was nothing peculiar to Petrarch;
the Emperors claimed to be the legitimate suc-
cessors of the Cresars ; the Popes appealed to the
Donation of Constantine as their title to exclusive
sovereignty in Rome ; the claims of both were theo-
retically reconciled by the White Guelf creed. Nor
was Petrarch's personal enthusiasm for Rome a new
sentiment in the world ; the tradition of her great-
ness and the aspiration for its revival had never
quite died away, and a generation before Petrarch
wrote his first letter to Benedict XII, Giovanni
Villani had been inspired by the sight of the

124

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Eternal City and the memory of her past glories
to set to work on his incomparable Florentine
Chronicle. What differentiates Petrarch's enthusi-

I asm for Rome from the sentiments of any prede-
cessor is his conception of the continuity of her

j history. He regards its periods not as separate
episodes connected only by an accidental tie of
locaHty, but as successive stages in an ordered
development, phases bright or dark in one deathless
career, destined to lead, through whatever diffi-
culties and trials, to the glorious consummation of
invincible empire. Looking thus upon her history
as a whole, political forms and ordinances became
to him mere secondary matters ; the Pope and the
Emperor themselves were but instruments designed
to secure the supremacy of the Roman people, the
people for whom Romulus built his sacred wall,
whose supremacy Scipio assured by his victory over
Carthage, for whose safety Cicero unmasked the
conspiracy of Catiline. If only either Pope or
Emperor would devote himself to the service of the
Roman people, Petrarch would be a good Papalist,
a loyal Imperialist. Alas! both were sadly neglect-
ful of their high mission ; both were thinking only
of their own petty interests ; neither of them would
live in Rome or work for her. Suddenly, like
thunder from a clear sky, came the astounding news
that Rome had found her champion ; that a man of
obscure origin but of lofty aims had made his
appeal to the noblest of her traditions ; that he had
set himself to revive the great age of her history,
the age when the people was really sovereign, and

J

ROME AND RIENZI

125

had taken for himself the title of Tribune as an
earnest that he would be as the Gracchi, that he
would stand for the people and break the yoke of
their oppressors from off their necks. Petrarch's
course lay before him clear and unmistakable :
Rienzi was trying to realise his own ideals ; at any
sacrifice of private interests, even of private friend-
ships, he must go with the champion of the Roman
■people,

Niccola di Lorenzo Gabrini, known to hts own
generation as Cola di Rienzo, and to ours by the
further modification " Rienzi," was the son of a
Roman innkeeper, who, finding the boy possessed
of unusual talent, sent him to a school of grammar
and rhetoric. Fired with enthusiasm for the classics,
Rienzi completed his own education by diligent
study of the ancient monuments and inscriptions,
which lay neglected in the modern city. For a
livelihood he adopted the profession of notary, but
his leisure was spent in studying the history of old
Rome, and in dreaming how her glories might be
revived. He was by temperament a dreamer; a
domestic tragedy made him a man of action. His
brother was killed in a tumult ; the political idealist
was thenceforth the avenger of blood. He would
exalt Rome by breaking the power of the barons
who misgoverned her. He had self-restraint enough 1
to await his opportunity. Meanwhile his talents,
and especially his splendid gift of oratory, made
him a conspicuous figure in Rome. Soon after
Clement VI's accession — there is some doubt as to
the exact date, but it was either in the summer

126 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

of

■ early i

-he ■

I Avignoi

went I
chief spokesman of an embassy sent by the magi-
stracy and people of Rome to the Pope. Here he
must have met Petrarch, here in all probability
their friendship began. There is even a tradition,
unsupported by evidence, that the poet was associ-
ated with Rienzi as spokesman of the embassy ;
however this may be, it is safe to assume that
Rome's youngest burgess, fresh from his coronation
on the Capitol, must have used his influence at
court in favour of his fellow-citizens. There is
indeed a passage at the end of Petrarch's magnifi-
cent ode Spirto Geniil, from which some biographers
have inferred either that the two men had never
met previously to the composition of the ode, or
that it must have been addressed not to Rienzi, but
to some other eminent citizen of Rome. But the
passage in question easily admits of an interpretation
consistent with the narrative here given ; the rest
of the ode tallies perfectly with Rienzi and the
events of 1347, and with no other person or events
of the period ; and the tone of Petrarch's earlier
letters to the Tribune implies a friendship founded
on personal acquaintance, as well as on community
of ideas. It is equally safe to assume that inter-
course with Petrarch acted as a keen stimulus to
Rienzi, He came to Avignon as a man honoured
in his own city, but unknown beyond it, nursing in
his mind great hopes, which so far he had found no
opportunity of communicating to others. Here he
discovered that those hopes were shared by one
who could make Europe ring with the praise of

ROME AND RIENZI 127

them, a man not only famous as the first poet and
scholar of his age, but sought out by princes to be
their friend and counsellor, and standing high in the
favour of Pope Clement himself.

The embassy had little if any tangible result ; 1
but Rienzi's eloquent exposition of the troubles and
needs of Rome is said to have made a favourable
impression on the Pope, and this may help to ex-
plain the benevolent attitude of his Vicar four years
later. Of the urgent need for reform there could
be no doubt. Since the Tope's departure Rome had
had no settled government ; a series of faction-fights
had constituted her history, the will of the tempo-
rary victors her law. Municipal affairs were sup-
posed to be administered by the popularly elected
heads of the thirteen city wards ; but these Capo-
rioni, as they were called, had no force at their

I back, and their office was an empty survival from a
former Constitution. The machinery of govern-

I ment was in the hands of the Senator, a chief
magistrate nominated annually by the Pope from

I the ranks of the nobles. If the Senator was a

' strong man in alliance with the barons of the pre-
dominant faction, he was feared and obeyed ; but
officially he was hardly more powerful than the
Caporioni. He could never be impartial, for he

I was never independent. The House of Colonna,

I the House of the Orsini, these were by turns the
effective rulers of Rome, and their government was
sheer brigandage.

Rienzi, on his return home, set himself to evolve

I civil order out of this anarchy. He presently began

128 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

a series of harangues to the people, which involved
him in frequent quarrels with the nobles. Gradu-
ally he advanced in popular favour; many of the
lesser barons, jealous of the great Houses which
overshadowed them, witnessed without displeasure,
or were even inclined to further the rise of a new
power in the State; and it was long before the pride
of the Colonna allowed them to see in their unex-
pected antagonist anything but an object of ridicule
and insult. But Rienzi's leaven worked, and
choosing his opportunities with rare skill, he first
promulgated a set of laws for the reform of the
Government, and then persuaded the people to
assign to htm the task of enforcing them. Alarmed
at last, but even now unable to measure the strength
of his despised opponent, Stefano Colonna hurried
back to Rome. The new ruler ordered him to quit
the city, and he had not provided himself with force
enough even to contest the mandate ; he had to
obey, and the more prominent of the nobles either
accompanied, or soon afterwards followed him
into banishment. An abortive conspiracy only
served to increase Rienzi's power; his enemies were
forced to swear allegiance to the new institutions.
The reformer had conquered ; for the first time
since the battle of Philippi, liberty was a word of
meaning in Rome. In the ecstasy of material
triumph, Rienzi was still mindful of the greatness of
his ideal ; invested with absolute power, he took
for himself the title identified in the history of old
Rome with the championship of popular freedom,
and with consummate tact associated the Vicar

I

ROME AND RIENZI 129

Apostolic with himself in the revived dignity. The
two were acclaimed joint Tribunes and Liberators
of the Roman people.

The astonishing tidings reached Avignon in the
Ctirly summer of 1347; they were soon confirmed
by a formal letter from Rienzi himself. Clement
and some few members of the Sacred College may
possibly have been statesmen enough to realise that I
the Papacy must ultimately succeed to any power J
wrested from the barons. The attitude assumed
by the Vicar Apostolic in Rome, and the fact that
Petrarch seems never for an instant to have lost
favour with the Pope, are indications that the
Tribune's success may have been not altogether
unwelcome in the highest quarters. But among
the Roman prelates, and especially in Cardinal
Colonna's household, the news was received with
consternation. Rienzi and all his works were de-
nounced with unmeasured violence ; and only one
solitary voice was raised in defence of the re-
former. That voice was Petrarch's. Immediately
on hearing of Rienzi's accession to power, he wrote
to him and to the Roman people a letter of praise,
encouragement, and exhortation, which he knew
would be circulated through the length and breadth j
of Italy ; and he followed this up with other similar
letters, with a Latin eclogue, and with the stately
Italian ode already mentioned. To his fervid
imagination, it seemed that " the ancient strife was
being fought again," that the nobles were playing
the part of the worst of the old patricians, and that
the destruction of a power, the more intolerable

I30 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

bei

i aliE

I blood.

; the

s possessors were
necessary preliminary to a reign of justice.

Estrangement from Cardinal Colonna was the
inevitable result of Petrarch's championship of
Rienzi ; it was not in human nature that a patron
should tolerate a client who openly advocated the
ruin of his family, and it must be confessed that
Petrarch was not happy in his manner of dealing
with the breach. The eclogue Divortium, written
on the subject of his parting with the Cardinal,
though not ungraceful, strikes the reader as arti-
ficial even beyond the wont of this kind of allegory.
Moreover, it tells less than half the truth. Dislike
of Avignon, longing for Italy, a desire for a life of
independence, are all indicated, and these were
genuine motives as far as they went But no hint
is given of Petrarch's adhesion to Rienzi, which
was the really determining cause of the separation.
Worse still is the letter of condolence written from
Parma some months after the battle of November
20th, in which the Colonna family was almost
annihilated. It opens, indeed, with a sincere and
touching acknowledgment of the writer's debt to
the Cardinal, but all the rest is sorry reading. The
laboured excuses for the delay in writing it, and the
cold, stilted terms of its yet more laboured consola-
tions, contrasting so strikingly with the passionate
outburst of Petrarch's emotion when his heart was
really wounded, suggest an inevitable task, under-
taken with reluctance and somewhat ungraciously
performed. Undoubtedly the very ardour of Pet-
rarch's patriotism made him appear more callous

I

ROME AND RIENZI 131

Ban he really was ; a man of less impassioned
sincerity would have found It easier to veil his
governing sentiment. And two things are very
noticeable in the history of Petrarch's treatment of
the Colonna disaster : first, that to the end of his
life he never for an instant doubted the political
necessity of breaking their power ; and secondly,
that in spite of this conviction, he never ceased to
speak of them, as distinguished from the other
Roman nobles, in terms of deep personal regard.
His relations with his old friend and patron had
become hopeless, and for this very reason he did
himself less than justice in the attempt to continue
them.

Avignon was now more than ever a place of
torment to him, and even Vaucluse lay too near the
hateful city to be tolerable as a residence. He
resolved that he would go to Italy and take his
stand by the Tribune's side. Rienzi seemed more
firmly seated in power than ever ; the fame of his
great enterprise had spread far and wide ; he had
formally announced his assumption of power to the
sovereign princes of Europe, and they in return
had sent ambassadors of the highest rank to greet
and congratulate him. On the very day when
Petrarch set out from Avignon the great slaughter
of the Colonna, which left old Stefano the survivor
of all his sons except the Cardinal, and of nearly
all his grandsons, might have seemed to have rid
the Tribune of his most dangerous antagonists.
But to those who could see beneath the surface,
the canker of decay was already visible. On

132 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

November 22nd Petrarch, travelling southward, met
a courier with letters from LasUus, which must of
course have been sent from Rome before the 20th ;
these gave news of Rietizi's doings which caused
him the utmost alarm. He decided to suspend
his journey and await events at Genoa, Letters
written on the journey to La;lius and to Socrates
expressed his dismay and apprehension, and on
the 29th he wrote in the strongest terms of anxiety,
warning, and entreaty to Rienzi himself. " I hear,"
he said, " that you no longer cherish the whole
people, as you used to do, but only the basest
faction of them." He implored Rienzi not to be
the destroyer of his own work, but to stand firm on
the lofty ground which he had taken, and to re-
member that great efforts are needed to sustain a
great reputation. Let him be mindful of his duty
to be the servant of the State, not her tyrant.

Petrarch's grief at the impending ruin of his
country was made, if possible, more poignant by his
sense of the falseness of his own position. He had
trumpeted Rienzi as the saviour of his country, the
hero who had done at a stroke the duty which a
long line of emperors had consistently neglected.
For his sake he had broken old friendships, and
exposed himself to the charge of callous ingratitude,
the most odious accusation that could be brought
against a man of his temperament. "A most fright-
ful storm of obloquy," he foresaw, must break upon
him, if Rienzi faltered in the great work, and with
denunciation of the turncoat would be mingled
bitter ridicule of the dupe. Petrarch was a self-

ROME AND RIENZI

133

conscious man, whose vanity would embitter such a
trouble, though it would not turn him from his
duty. The agony of his anxiety for his country
and the alarm with which he viewed his own pros-
pects are voiced in the despairing cry of his letter
to Lselius : " I recognise my country's doom ;
wherever 1 turn, I find cause and matter for grief.
With Rome torn and wounded, what must be the
condition of Italy ? With Italy maimed, what must
my life be ? "

One ray of hope crossed his mind : Lcelius was an
old and intimate friend of the Colonna ; might not
partisanship have led him Into exaggeration of the
Tribune's failings? Alas! his tidings were only
too true. Rienzi's head was turned by the sudden-]
ness and completeness of his success. His cool
judgment gave place to capricious obstinacy ; he 1
intrigued with the various parties among his oppo-
nents so clumsily that he united them all against
him. He quarrelled with the Pope's Vicar, and
^H cited Pope and Emperor to his tribunal ; at the
^B same lime his pretensions disgusted the mob as
^f much as his high position excited their envy. Cen-
turies of misrule had left the Roman people ill-fitted
for self-government ; patience could hardly be ex-

■ pected of them. After all, was not Rienzi their
creature.' By what title, then, could he claim to be
their despot? It is easy to ta.\ the Roman people
with fickleness; in fairness it should be remembered
that they did not desert Rienzi till he himself had

(given unmistakable signs that his lofty patriotism
had degenerated into a personal and rather tawdry

134 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES
ambition. He rose to power as a great idealist, he
fell like any faction-mongering^ Italian despot, and
his fall was even more sudden than his rise. Hardly
had he celebrated an insolent triumph over the
slaughtered Colonna, when Nemesis came upon
him. The mob rose against him in tumult, and to
save his life he had to lurk for some days in a
hiding-place in the city, and then flee in disguise to
Naples. The pitiful meanness of the catastrophe
embittered his friends' grief at the failure of their
hopes. " At least." said Petrarch, " he could have
died gloriously in the Capitol which he had freed.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT PLAGUE AND THE

DEATH OF LAURA

1348-1349

THE condition of Italy in 1348 seemed desper-
ate indeed. For five years the Great Com-
pany, a. body of soldier-adventurers disbanded by
the Pisans at the close of a war with Florence, had
subjected her to a war of brigandage ; Naples lay
at the mercy of the Hungarian invader; Lombardy
and the Emilia groaned under the misrule of un-
scrupulous tyrants ; and the only hopeful attempt
ever made to restore the liberties and reassert the
supremacy of Rome had just ended in ignominious
failure. Finally, as if man had not done enough to
devastate the " Garden of the Empire," she was
now to suffer first a destructive earthquake, and
then the ravages of that appalling scourge of God,
the Great Pestilence. Boccaccio in his introduction
to the Decameron has left a description of this awful
visitation, which ranks among the masterpieces of
literature. Perhaps the most striking impression
derived from reading it is the feeling that com-
munities and individuals alike lost their sense of
responsibility ; that the ordinary rules of life were
abrogated, and the moral code superseded by the

136 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

law that each man made for himself. Petrarch, too,
speaks in a letter to Socrates of the unprecedented
havoc wrought by the plague : " of empty houses,
deserted cities, the fields untilled, their space seem-
ing narrowed by the strewn corpses, everywhere
the vastness of a terrible silence." He suffered bis
full share of the general misery : blow after blow
fell upon him, crushing his spirit and crippling his
power of work ; for a year and a half, he declared,
in the letter just quoted, he could neither do nor say
anything of worth. That is not literally exact: even
at this season of abject sorrow he produced a few
pieces of interesting work, including the poetical
letter to Virgil written at Mantua ; but as compared
with any other epoch of bis life, the years 1348 and
1349 may be accounted a barren period. He was
miserable and restless. Parma was his home, but
he could not stay long at a time even in his " Cisal-
pine Helicon." We find him often at Verona, then
wandering from one Lombard city to another, and
beginning the connection with Padua, which was
destined to become so intimate in the near future.
At the end of January, 1348, he was at Verona;
on March 13th he returned to Parma, and brought
with him the boy Giovanni, whose education he
now entrusted to the grammarian Ghilberto Baiani.
Giovanni probably lived at home, attending Ghil-
berto s school as a day-boy, and father and son were
both the unhappier for an association which should
have brought solace to the one and a new interest
in life to both.

The first bereavement of which Petrarch received

THE GREAT PLAGUE

'37

I
I

I

certain tidings in this year of mourning was the
death of his cousin and friend, Francesco degli
Albizzi, a sorrow which he felt the more acutely as
Francesco was struck down while on his way to pay
him an eagerly expected visit. But already, if we
may treat the uncorroborated evidence of passages
in his Italian poems as sufficient authority for a
fact, he had felt the presage of a far heavier loss,
which must change the face of the world for him
henceforward. On April 6th, the twenty-first anni-
versary of his first meeting with Laura, while
resident at Verona, he felt a sudden presentiment
of her death, and on May 19th a letter from
Socrates reached him at Parma telling him that she
had indeed died at the very moment of the mysteri-
ous warning. The fly-leaf of his Virgil contains
this entry : —

" Laura, a shining example of virtue in herself, and
for many years made known to fame by my poems,
first came visibly before my eyes In the season
of my early youth, in the year of our Lord 1327,
on the 6th day of the month of April, in the Church
of St. Clara of Avignon, in the morning. And in the
same city, on the same 6th day of the same month
of April, at the same hour of Prime, but in the year
1348, the bright light of her life was taken away
from the light of this earth, when I chanced to be
dwelling at Verona in unhappy ignorance of my
doom. The sorrowful report came to me, however,
in a letter from my Lewis, which reached me at
Parma on the morning of the 19th day of May in the
same year. Her most chaste and most beautiful

138 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

body was laid to rest in the habitation of the Minor
Friars at evening on the very day of her death.
Her sou], I am persuaded, has returned, in the
words that Seneca uses of Afrlcanus, to the heaven
which was its home. I have thought good to write
this note, with a kind of bitter sweetness, as a
painful reminder of my sorrow, and have chosen
this place for it, as one which comes constantly
under my eyes, reckoning as I do that there ought
to be nothing to give me further pleasure in this
life, and that by frequent looking on these words
and by computing the swiftness of life's flight I may
be admonished that now, with the breaking of my
strongest chain, it is time to flee out of Babylon.
And this by the prevention of God's grace will be
easy for me, when I consider with insight and
resolution my past life's idle cares, the emptiness of
its hopes, and its extraordinary issues."

The death of Laura removed an element of storm
and stress from Petrarch's life ; at the cost of a
great sorrow it gave him final deliverance from
passion. Years afterwards, when he sat down to
write in all candour the autobiographical fragment
which he called his Letter to Posterity, he could
even speak of his bereavement as " timely for him,
in spite of its bitterness." That was the calm judg-
ment of retrospect; it is the note in the Virgil
which expresses his feeling at the time, and helps
us to realise the deep sincerity underlying the
elaborate art of liis poems On the Death of Madonna
Laura. In poetical quality the second part of the
Camoniere does not differ from the first ; there is

THE GREAT PLAGUE

■39

I

the same faultless workmanship, the same delicate
play of fancy, the same felicitous rendering of the
subtlest shades of emotion. To take only a single
illustration, the sonnet to the bird that sang in
winter may rank with the sonnet to the waters of
the Sorgue as a lyric born of the poet's sympathy
with nature. But in sentiment the poems of the
second part differ widely from their predecessors ;
their prevailing tone is exactly that " bitter sweet-
ness" of which the note in the Virgil speaks, and
they are permeated by a spirit of piety, which
reminds us of Petrarch's saying in the Secreium
that " through love of Laura he attained to love
of God."

The composition of these poems extended over
more than a decade, and we cannot assign dates to
them with even an approach to exactitude. Criti-
cism which relies entirely on appreciation of spirit
and tone is always risky, for it gives undue scope
to the temperament of the critic ; and it is doubly
dangerous in dealing with Petrarch, who was for
ever correcting and polishing his works, and whose
faculty of reminiscence was so acute that it could
carry him back almost at will into the temper of a
period that had long passed away. Neither can we
trust the position of any given poem in the collec-
tion as a proof of its place in the order of composi-
tion ; there can be Httle doubt that in the final
arrangement of the Canzoniere Petrarch was guided
chielly by his sense of artistic fitness. Still it is
reasonable to suppose that many of the lyrics were
the immediate fruit of his sorrow, and that, speak-

I40 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

ing generally, the earlier in place were also the
earlier in time ; it is difficult, for instance, to believe
that at least the inspiration of the ode Cke debb' io
far was not due to the poignancy of recent grief.

All through the summer the plague infested
Avignon, and on July 3rd Cardinal Colonna fell a
victim to it. Stefano the Elder had now outlived
all his seven sons. However great was the strain
put upon their relations by recent events, Petrarch
had till a year ago been like a son of the House,
and even in the pain of parting he had not for a
moment forgotten or concealed his debt of affection-
ate gratitude to his patron. He could not avoid
writing to old Stefano, and he accomplished the
task of condolence much better now than in the
previous autumn. It was not an easy letter to
write ; he could not pour out his soul, and he would
not be guilty of an insincerity. He solved the
difficulty in a way characteristic of him and of his
age, by composing with extreme care an elaborate
epistle graced with rich ornaments of classical
learning. Nothing could be more foreign to the
sentiments of our own day ; but it was what a past
generation would have called "a beautiful letter."
and there can be no doubt that its recipient would
take as a compliment the pains bestowed on
its composition. Throughout its length Petrarch
keeps his emotion under restraint ; but its formality
is rather grave than cold, and in one passage, which
speaks of Giovanni as having attained to the
cardinalate and of Giacomo as having been surely
destined to rise even higher had life been granted

J

THE GREAT PLAGUE 141

to him, the sincerity of the emotion is almost
intensified by the restraint put upon its expression.

If grief could have been assuaged by public
honours, Petrarch would have found no lack of
consolation. The " storm of obloquy " which he
anticipated from his association with Rienzi never
burst. On the contrary, hardly a month passed
without his receiving some signal mark of esteem
from persons high in place and power. Whatever
the rulers of Italy might think of Rienzi's abortive
political Renaissance, they vied with each other in
doing honour to Petrarch as the leader of its intel-
lectual counterpart. Humanism was now in the
air, and the sure instinct which guides men swayed
by a general impulse pointed to Petrarch as its
prophet. Heedless of political differences, the rulers
of Ferrara, of Carpi, of Mantua, and of Padua were
at one in welcoming him to their cities, and that
the Pope regarded him with undiminished favour was
testified by his presentation in 1348 or 1349 to the
archdeaconry of Parma, of which he took formal
possession in 1350.

Of these new connections by far the most im-
portant was his friendship with Jacopo II da Car-
rara, the ruler of Padua. History affords no more
typical example of an Italian despot than this
remarkable man, who obtained his lordship by
murder and forgery, and used it to promote the
welfare of his city and the interests of art and learn-
ing. Better, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries
he appreciated the value of Petrarch's work, and
this just estimate made him, if possible, more eager

143 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

than the others to do honour to tlie poet and to
enjoy the luxury of his companionship. It was in
1345 that he seized the government of Padua;
over and over again in the next few years he sent
letters and messages entreating Petrarch to come
and live with him there; at last, in March, 1349,
Petrarch paid him a visit and was received, " not
like a man, but with such a welcome as awaits the
souls who enter Paradise." To ensure his new
friend's future residence in Padua, Jacopo procured
him a canonry there, to which he was formally
inducted on the Saturday after Easter. Loaded
thus with honours and benefits, Petrarch may be
forgiven if he ignored Jacopo's crimes, which he
had not personally witnessed, and celebrated in
terms of unstinted eulogy his friend's virtues and
charm, of which he had daily experience in the
intimacy of private life. Jacopo was evidently a
man as fascinating to his friends as he was danger-
ous to his enemies. When he set himself to win
Petrarch's love and gratitude, he succeeded so com-
pletely that the latter could write to Luca Cristiano,
to whom he would certainly not be guilty of an
insincerity, " I have another residence equally tran-
quil, equally fit to be our joint home, at Padua, in
the valley of the Po, where no small portion of our
happiness would consist in the privilege of living
with my benefactor whose qualities I have so
extolled to you."

This letter was written to Luca on May i8th,
very soon after Petrarch's return to Parma, where
he found that, as he prettily says, " the one draw-

THE GREAT PLAGUE

143

I

back to his stay in Padua had been that he had
thereby missed a visit from Luca and Mainardo."
Bitterly indeed did he regret his absence when
some weeits later he learnt that it had lost him his
last opportunity of seeing that loyal soldier and true
friend alive. Finding him away from home, the
two had supped in his house and slept together
in his bed. The next morning they left a letter
telling him that they had just come from Avignon
after saying good-bye to Socrates, and were on
their way, Mainardo to Florence and Luca to Rome,
but that a little later on ihey hoped to come back
and stay with him in Parma. Finding this letter on
his return more than a month afterwards, Petrarch
began to wonder why he heard no further tidings
of them, and presently dispatched a confidential
servant to Florence with a letter to Mainardo, and
a request that he would send the servant on to
Luca. Eight days later the messenger reappeared
with the lamentable news that, as the friends were
crossing the Apennines, they had been ambushed
by armed banditti ; that Mainardo, who was riding
ahead, had been instantly slain, and Luca, who
dashed to his assistance, had at length escaped, no
one knew whither, so severely wounded that it was
feared he must have died. Perils of this kind
were common enough in the Italy of the fourteenth
century ; Petrarch himself, as we have seen, had
had more than one narrow escape from a similar
fate. But his wrathful indignation knew no bounds
when he heard that these banditti were under the
protection of certain great men of the neighbour-

fL

144 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

hood " unworthy of the name of nobles," who
prevented the peasants from coming to Luca's help
and avenging Mainardo's death, and gave the
robbers shelter in their fortresses. Petrarch was
for some time in doubt about Luca's fate. He
made fruitless inquiries at Florence, at Pjacenza,
and in Rome ; at length a member of his household
happened to meet a Florentine of position passing
through Parma, and, knowing his master's anxiety,
made bold to entreat the stranger to see Petrarch
and tell him all he knew. From this stranger
Petrarch heard to his great comfort that Luca was
still alive, but the melancholy story of Mainardo's
death was confirmed in every particular.

Many other friends died in these terrible years of
plague, among them one whose loss caused Petrarch
the keenest grief, though their friendship was of
recent origin. Paganino Bizozero was a native of
the Milanese territory whom Luchino Visconti had
appointed Governor of Parma. Here Petrarch
found him at the end of 1347, and here appar-
ently he died on May 23rd, 1349, though his
governorship had come to an end four months
before. Their intimacy, therefore, lasted less than
a year and a half, but Petrarch's account of him,
given in the same letter to Socrates which tells of
Mainardo's death, shows how close a bond of affec-
tion united them during that short period. "There
was left to me," he says, "a friend of illustrious
dignity, a high-minded and very prudent man,
Paganino of Milan, who by many instances of his
worth had become most congenial to me, and

THE GREAT PLAGUE

145

I

I

seemed altogether worthy not of my love only, but
of yours loo. So he had begun to be as a second
Socrates to me ; there was almost the same confi-
dence, almost the same intimacy, as well as that
sweetest property of friendship, the sharing of either
kind of fortune and the opening of the soul's hiding-
places for the loyal communication of its secret
things. Oh, how he loved you ; how eagerly he
desired to see you whom indeed he did see with his
spiritual eyes ; how anxious he was for your life in
this general shipwreck ! so that even I marvelled
that a man not personally known could be so well
beloved. If ever he saw me sadder than my wont,
he would ask in friendly trepidation, What is the
matter? What news of our friend? And when
he had been told that you were well, he would put
away his fear and overflow with exceeding joyful-
ness. Now he, as I must tell you with many tears
. . . was suddenly seized one evening with this
sickness of the plague which is now destroying the
world. He had taken supper with his friends, and
had spent the rest of that evening entirely in talking
about us and discoursing of our friendship and our
affairs. That night he spent in enduring extreme
agony with perfect fearlessness ; in the morning
death quickly carried him off; and, the plague
abating no jot of its usual cruelty, before three days
were past his sons and every member of his house-
hold had followed him to the grave."

CHAPTER IX
FLORENCE AND BOCCACCIO

PETRARCH'S life may be divided into three
clearly defined periods, of which the boundary
marks are dates in the history of his friendships.
The first period ends with the great plague, and
the deaths of Laura and Mainardo ; the second
opens with his visit to Boccaccio, and closes with
the second plague and the deaths of Socrates,
Laelius, Nelli, and Barbato; the third is the last
period of the poet's life, when of his earlier friends
only Guido Settimo and Philip de Cabassoles re-
mained alive, but his old age was saved from
desolation by the ever-strengthening tie of affection
which bound him to Boccaccio, by the veneration of
his pupils, and by the devoted love of his daughter.
The last years of the first period, while afflicting
him with heavy sorrows, had brought him a great
accession of material wealth : he now held a priory,
three canonries, and an archdeaconry, to the latter
of which was attached a large official house, of
which he made occasional use, while retaining for
ordinary purposes the more modest residence,
which he had bought and beautified. His personal
expenses, apart from the cost of travel, cannot have

FLORENCE AND BOCCACCIO

147

been large, for wherever he went he found welcome
and entertainment. His income, then, was more
than sufficient to supply his personal needs, and
to allow him to make provision for his son and
daughter. Characteristically, he spent the surplus
in furthering his life's work. From this time for-
ward, he was hardly ever without a copyist or two
in the house — sometimes he had as many as four
at once — engaged in making transcripts from the
precious manuscripts, which he had either hunted
out himself, or borrowed from friends, with a
view to their reproduction. He still did much of
this work himself, and more than once we find him
complaining, not that good copyists were dear, but
that they were scarce. We shall never know with
certainty how much we owe to this employment of
his money, but we may safely assume that if he had
remained poor, many a library would be without
some of its richest treasures. Even as things were,
his industry and Boccaccio's were taxed to the
utmost limit of human capacity.

He divided the earlier months of 1350 between
Padua, Parma, and Verona ; on Valentine's Day he
was present at the solemn translation of the body
of St. Anthony of Padua from its first place of
burial to the church newly erected in the saint's
honour. A document discovered by Fracassetti
fixes June 20th as the day on which he took formal
possession of his archdeaconry ; immediately after-
wards he must have left Parma for a flying visit to
Mantua, for it was on his way back from that city
that some members of the Gonzaga family enter-

148 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

tained him on June 28ih to a sumptuous supper
in their castle of Luzzera, which Petrarch describes
in a humorous letter to Lxlius as "a home of flies
and fleas enHvened by the croaking of an army of
frogs."

Meanwhile the year of Jubilee was being cele-
brated in Rome, with the more solemnity as the
terrors of the plague had incUned the minds of
many to religion, and disposed them to obtain the
indulgences promised to those who went on pilgrim-
age to Rome. Petrarch tried unsuccessfully to
persuade Gulielmo da Pastrengo to accompany him
thither. Failing in this, he set out alone, about
the beginning of October. He travelled by way of
Florence, a journey ever memorable as the occasion
of his first meeting with Boccaccio.

History contains no more satisfactory episode
than the friendship of these two men of letters.
From their society their companions must have
derived the same kind of pleasure that the eye
finds in looking at a harmonious arrangement of
complementary colours. Their natures were made
to supplement each other ; the life of neither could
be reckoned complete till he had found his fellow.
Petrarch had an anxious spirit ; under every rose
he looked for the thorn, and if he failed to find it,
he vexed his soul with questioning whether it ought
not to have pricked him. Boccaccio plucked the
flower and wore it with a gay assurance that took
no count of thorn-pricks. Petrarch's worst troubles
were the offspring of his own soul ; Boccaccio's
were imposed on him by the rub of circumstance,

^

i

FLORENCE AND BOCCACCIO 149

Petrarch was introspective, self-conscious, jealous to
a fault of his reputation, but laudably anxious to
deserve it. Boccaccio was too well amused by the
follies of others to be deeply concerned about his
own, and too instinctively an artist to care over-
much what other people thought of his art. Pet-
rarch had the deeper nature, the higher ideals, the
more sensitive conscience ; in Boccaccio we are
captivated by a rich generosity of sympathetic
humour. In intellect no less than in character each
of them was his friend's complement. They were
alike in their enthusiasm for learning and in their
indefatigable industry, but they were alike in hardly
anything else. Petrarch was incomparably the riper
scholar, the sounder critic ; he had a more reasoned
judgment, a more cultivated taste ; Boccaccio had
the more fertile imagination, the brighter wiL
Petrarch was lucid in argument, but apt to be prolix
in narrative ; Boccaccio showed little talent for dis-
quisition, but his was the story-teller's inimitable
gift-
There is therefore a quality in Petrarch's inter-
course with Boccaccio which distinguishes it from
all his other friendships. Close and intimate as it
was. there were others which for some years to
come surpassed it in intensity of feeling ; Boccaccio
was very dear, but Socrates, Lselius, and Francesco
Nelli, of whom we shall have to speak immediately,
were dearer still. All these, however, were Pet-
rarch's followers in the battle for culture ; Boccaccio
stood by his side, a comrade-in-arms. True, that
with unfailing reverence he styled himself his

150 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

pupil, and that the title was accurate as well
modest, Petrarch possessed, in a degree rare even
among great leaders, the divine gift of kindling
enthusiasm, and Boccaccio's glowing tributes may
express without exaggeration the magnitude of his
debt ; none the less, he stands out above the rest,
his masters sole intellectual peer.

In Boccaccio's house Petrarch found another
Florentine, with whom he fell at once into a friend-
ship that reminds us of Lombez and the earlier
days at Avignon. Francesco di Nello Rinucci,
commonly called Francesco Nelli, came of an in-
fluential family ; his father had held the office of
Gonfalonier of Justice, the highest executive dignity
in the republic. He was himself in Orders, and
Prior of the Church of the Holy Apostles, but had
some talent for affairs, for which he found scope
later in the post of Secretary to the Grand
Seneschal of Naples ; at home Petrarch seems to
have thought that his abilities were insufficiently
appreciated, in spite of the fact that he was a most
loyal patriot. He was an intimate friend of Boccaccio,
and an enthusiast for learning. He took his place
at once in the inmost circle of Petrarch's friends,
and the latter, with his familiar habit of bestowing
gracious nicknames, called him his Simonides.

Here, too, Petrarch met the eminent scholar and
lawyer Jacopo or Lapo da Casiiglionchio, of whose
accomplishments Coluccio Salutati, himself a dis-
tinguished follower of Petrarch in humanistic studies,
could write after his death : " Whom has our State
ever produced more diligent in pursuit of our

J

FLORENCE AND BOCCACCIO 151

studies and of those which pertain to eloquence ?
Which of the poets was unknown to him, nay,
rather, which of them was not a hackneyed writer
to him ? Who was better versed in the works of
Cicero ? Who more abundant in gleanings from
history? Who more deeply imbued with the pre-
cepts of moral philosophy? Good heavens! How
he abounded in sweetness, and in weightiness of
discourse ; how ready he was in dictation, or in
setting himself to the task of writing ! "

With all these three men Petrarch had already
been in communication by letter. Lapo had sent
him Cicero's Pro Milone the year before, and
thenceforward the two kept up a constant commerce
of books. In addition to the Pro Milone, Lapo
sent him at different times the Pro Plancio and the
Philippics, of which Petrarch had copies made by
trustworthy scribes before sending them back ; and
in return he communicated to Lapo his own precious
discovery, the Pro Arckid. Lapo was a fervent
admirer of Petrarch's genius, and possessed a manu-
script of the last thirteen books of his Familiar
Letters, which is now preserved in the Laurentian
Library at Florence. It contains some interesting
marginal notes in Lapo's own handwriting.

How long Petrarch had been in communication
with Boccaccio and Nelli is not quite certain. If
one of his letters to Socrates is rightly ascribed to
the year 1350, he was already on terms of affection-
ate intimacy with them both ; and this is confirmed
by Boccaccio's statement that he was devoted to
Petrarch for forty years or more. This passage

152 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

has led 1

; that the I

! have met

I conjecture

in Paris, while others have dated their intimacy
from Petrarch's first visit to Naples; but Boccaccio's
words do not necessarily imply more than devoted
admiration, and Petrarch's own statement that Boc-
caccio had not previously known him by sight is a
conclusive reason for assigning the year 1350 as the
date of their first meeting face to face. We must
suppose, then, either that the sentence in the letter
to Socrates is a later interpolation, or that the
earlier intimacy had been one of letters which have
not come down to us. The first extant communica-
tion is a copy of verses sent by Petrarch to
Boccaccio in 1349.

This first visit was a very short one ; Petrarch
hastened on to Rome, but on October 1 5th he was
delayed at Bolsena by an injury to the thigh caused
by a kick from his horse. In spite of this mishap,
he was in Rome by November ist, but his wound
still gave him much pain. In December he left
Rome for his birthplace, Arezzo, whose citizens
received him with extraordinary honour. Thence
he went on to Florence for a second and probably
longer visit to Boccaccio ; and it was here, not at
Arezzo as Fracassetti states, that Lapo gave him
a copy of the newly discovered Institutions of
Quintilian. As was his wont, Petrarch eagerly
devoured the new treasure, and then sat down to
an appreciation of it in the form of a letter to its
dead author.

He left Florence about the new year, and three
months later he received a return visit from

I three I

1 Boc- 1

I

FLORENCE AND BOCCACCIO 153

caccio, of which the occasion must have been singu-
larly gratifying to both. Technically Petrarch was
still a banished man ; the decree which exiled
Petracco two years before his son's birth applied to
his descendants, and Petrarch was theoretically in
peril of his life when in his forty-seventh year he
visited the city of his ancestors. Practically there
was no fear of any attack on him. Florence was
eager to claim her share in the distinction achieved
by her illustrious son. But for very shame she
could not speak of Petrarch as a Florentine while
her own records proclaimed him an exile. Pet-
rarch's visits to Florence gave an appropriate
opportunity of redressing the wrong done to him
through his father, and his friendship with Boccaccio
enabled the reparation to be made in a singularly
agreeable manner. At the beginning of April
Boccaccio went to Padua as the bearer of a letter
from the Priors of the Guilds and the Gonfalonier
of Justice of the People and State of Florence, re-
voking the sentence of banishment, restoring the
property confiscated nearly fifty years before, and
inviting Petrarch in terms of honorific compli-
ment to fix his abode in the city of his forefathers.
Petrarch replied in cordial and dignified terms. It
is noticeable that even as an exile he had always
spoken of Florence as his " Patria," and he must
now have felt a new pleasure in acknowledging his
Tuscan descent. For a time he may even have
thought seriously of accepting the invitation to go
and live among those who now addressed him as
" fellow-citizen."

«

154 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Ho

r this

/ be, Padua had for the moment

-lowever t

lost its charm, and had become a place of mourning
for him. He had returned there on January 7th, to
find that a fortnight earlier Jacopo da Carrara had
been assassinated by a bastard nephew. Petrarch's
grief was profound. His lamentations, loud and
bitter as they are, have no note of exaggeration ;
his praises of his dead friend, though pitched in the
highest key, are absolutely sincere. Jacopo's death
must have made him not unwilling to leave Italy
for a time, when in the summer of 1351 it became
convenient for him to return to Vaucluse.

-^

CHAPTER X

VAUCLUSE

ON May 3rd he left Padua, accompanied by the
boy Giovanni, after dictating an impromptu
epitaph for Jacopo's tomb, on which he might profit-
ably have spent a little more time. The genuine-
ness of its sentiment makes inadequate amends for
the extreme flatness of its composition. Petrarch
had the pen of a ready writer, but the fluency of his
poetic style always needed the correction of his
maturer judgment.

That night he stayed at Vicenza, and found there,
to his amusement and delight, an old man more
enthusiastic about Cicero than himself, or at least
more intemperate in praise of him. The talk of
the company after supper fell upon the great Latin
author, the old man abounding in unqualified admira-
tion of him. Here was Petrarch's pet subject
brought ready to his hand ; he put forward his
favourite view that Cicero was flawless as a writer
and an orator, but somewhat unstable as a politician,
and he gave the audience the rare privilege of
hearing him read his own two letters to Cicero,
which are written upon this theme. But the old
man was unconvinced ; he threw out his hands

156 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

piteously, crying, "Spare, oh spare my Cicero!"
And when pressed by artfuments that he could not
answer, shut his eyes and turned away his head as
if in pain, moaning, " Ah me ! Ah me ! So they are
finding fault with my Cicero ! "

Petrarch stayed some days at Verona, and then
went on to Piacenza, whence, on June nth, he
dispatched a letter to Socrates, written some weeks
earlier, but held back for want of a trusty mes-
senger. To this he added a few sentences announc-
ing that he was on his way to Vaucluse, and hoped
that Socrates would soon meet him there. He
actually arrived there by way of Mont Gen^vre on
June 2 1 St.

For nearly two years Vaucluse was once more
his home, and he seems to have lived there for
weeks and even months together without interrup-
tion. Of course he went sometimes to Avignon ;
during the whole period, indeed, business of various
kinds took him there much oftener and kept him
there much longer than he liked. Not a few such
visits were paid in connection with a little incident
of monastic intrigue, which gave him a good deal
of occupation and must surely have afforded him
some amusement. To the great Benedictine abbey
of Vallombrosa were attached several dependent
religious houses, among which was the abbey of
Corvara, near Bologna. In 1351 the post of Abbot
of Corvara fell vacant ; the right of nomination was
vested in the Abbot of Vallombrosa, Petrarch and
his Florentine friends desired that the dignity should
be conferred on a certain Don Ubertino; Nelli was

A

VAUCLUSE

157

I
I

eager to back Petrarch in procuring this
appointment, and the Bishop of Florence also used
his influence in Ubertino's favour. The Abbot was
a saintly person, unused to the ways of a place-
hunting world. He yielded to all this pressure and
nominated Don Ubertino ; then almost immediately
he repented of his decision, revoked the appoint-
ment, and made a second nomination in favour of
Don Guido, another brother of the Order. Uber-
tino refused to give way ; he had got his presenta-
tion, and he meant to have the place. Guido was
equally firm in his determination to be Abbot of
Corvara. The dispute went for judgment to Avig-
non ; and the Abbot of Vallombrosa found himself
in a pitiable position. He was of course disposed
to maintain his second nomination, and had for-
warded papers in support of it to Avignon. But
again the Bishop and Nell! intervened, and induced
him to promise neutrality. He wrote a letter to his
lawyer at Avignon full of praises of Ubertino, and
ending with the cryptic statement that he could not
speak more explicitly because he had once already
been accused of inconstancy, and he would not
incur the reproach a second time. To the ordinary
man's intelligence it seems rather as if he had now
incurred it from both sides. The affair dragged on
for months ; the law was not more expeditious at
Avignon than elsewhere, and the decision was
further delayed by the Pope's illness. Petrarch
threw himself heart and soul into Ubertino's cause;
Fracasselti even represents him as arguing it in
court ; his own letters give no warrant for this, but

158 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

show that he left nothing undone that influence and
solicitation could achieve, " I have become in
another's behalf what I never have been in my
own," he writes, "a busy importunate canvasser."
The case was heard at last in full Consistory ;
Petrarch's opinion was quoted, and his wishes
carried weight with Pope and Cardinals, and much
to his delight Ubertino was declared lawful Abbot
of Corvara.

After settling this little matter of ecclesiastical
patronage, Petrarch still had occasion for frequent
visits to "Babylon." But he stayed there no longer
than he could help, and the period from Mid-
summer, 1351, to the middle of April, 1353, may
be regarded as practically spent in his "Transalpine
Helicon." It was a period of profuse letter- writing;
the Famiiiares are not arranged in quite trust-
worthy chronological order, but, speaking roughly,
more than five books of them, from the middle of
the eleventh to nearly the end of the sixteenth,
were written at this time. From frequent allusions
in these letters, we know also that it was a time of
much reading and hard literary work, though we
cannot name with certainty the books on which
Petrarch was engaged. There is a passage in the
lamentable letter to Socrates of June, 1349, in
which Petrarch says that his friends are looking for
great men's histories from his pen, but that he has
now no heart for anything but mourning. The
allusion must surely be to his great and long-
forgotten work, the Lives of Illustrious Men, and
we may infer that this history of the Roman

VAUCLUSE

159

I

Republic, written In the form of a series of bio-\
graphics, from Romulus to Julius Caesar, had been f
well advanced in the earlier periods of his residence \
at Vaucluse ; it is reasonable to conjecture further
that on getting back to his books, and resuming his
usual habits of work, Petrarch would devote himself
anew to its composition, but he did not quite com-
plete it, for at the end of 1354 he told the Emperor
that " he still wanted time and leisure to give it the
final touches." Italian politics, too, as we shall have
occasion to note later, occupied much of his time
and thought during these years. But above all,
this is a period of happy country life in the beauti-
ful valley of the Sorgue, and there are no more
delightful passages in the whole range of Petrarch's
writings than those in which he describes its
I charms. A complete collection of these passages
would fill a fair-sized volume. Here we must be
content with the description of his life given in a
letter to Nelh in the summer of 1352. He writes
as follows : —

" I am spending the summer at the source of the
Sorgue. You know what comes next without my
saying it, but as you bid me speak, I will tell you in
a few words.

" I have declared war on my body. May He
without whose aid I must fail so help me, as gullet
belly, tongue, ears, and eyes often seem to me to be
not my own members, but my undutiful foes. Many
are the evils which I remember having suffered
from them, especially from the eyes, which have
I led me into all my falls. Now I have shut them up

i6o PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

here so that they can see hardly anything but sky,
hills, and streams ; neither gold, nor jewels, nor
ivory, nor purple cloth, nor horses, except two mere
ponies, which carry me round the valleys in com-
pany with a single lad. Lastly, I never see the face
of a woman, except that of my bailiff's wife, and if
you saw her, you might suppose yourself to be look-
ing on a patch of the Libyan or Ethiopian desert.
"X'ls a scorched, sunburnt countenance, with not a
trace of freshness or juice remaining ; had Helen
worn such a face, Troy would still be standing ; had
Lucretia and Virginia been thus dowered, Tar-
quinius had not lost his kingdom, nor Appius died
in his prison. But let me not, after this description
of her aspect, rob the goodwife of the eulogy due to
her virtues; her soul is as white as her skin is
swarthy. She is a bright example of female ugli-
ness boding no harm to man. And I might say
more on this head, if Seneca had not dealt with the
theme at length in his letters which allude to his
Claranum. My bailiffs wife has this singular pro-
perty, that while beauty is in general an attribute
proper rather to woman than to man, she is so little
affected by the want of it that you may reckon her
ugliness becoming to her. There never was a
trustier, humbler, more laborious creature. In the
sun's full blaze, where the very grasshopper can
scarce bear the heat, she spends her whole days in
the fields, and her tanned hide laughs at Leo and
Cancer. At evening the old dame returns home,
and busies her unwearied, invincible little body
about household work, with such vigour that you

VAUCLUSE

l6l

her a lass fresh from the bed-

I

I

might suppose
chamber. Not a murmur all this time, not a
grumble, no hint of trouble in her mind, only in-
credible care lavished on her husband and children,
on me, on my household, and on the guests who
come to see me, and at the same time an in-
credible scorn for her own comfort. This woman
of stone has a heap of sacking on the bare ground
for her bed. Her food is bread well-nigh as hard
as iron, her drink wine which might more justly be
styled vinegar drowned in water ; if you offer her
anything of mellower flavour, long custom has
taught her to think the softer victual hard. But
enough about my bailiffs wife, who would not have
engaged my pen except In a country letter. Well,
this is my eyes' discipline. What shall I say of my
ears !* Here I have no solace of song or flute or
viol, which, elsewhere, are wont to carry me out of
myself; all such sweetness the breeze has wafted
away from me. Here the only sounds are the
occasional lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep,
the songs of the birds, and the ceaseless murmur of
the stream. What of my tongue, by which I have
often raised my own spirits, and sometimes perhaps
those of others ? Now it lies low, and is often
silent from dawn to dusk, for it has no one ex-
cept me to talk to. As to my gullet and belly, I
have so disciplined them, that my herdsman's
bread is often enough for me, and 1 even enjoy
it, and I leave the white bread, brought me
from a distance, to be eaten by the servants who
fetched it. To such an extent does custom stand

i62 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

me in the stead of luxury. And so my bailiff and
good friend, who humours all my whims, and has
himself a constitution of stone, has no quarrel with
me on any subject, except that my fare is harder
than he says a man can put up with for any time.
I, on the other hand, am persuaded that such fare
can be tolerated longer than luxurious living, which
the satirist declares to be most wearisome, and not
to be endured five days together. Grapes, figs,
nuts, and almonds are my delicacies. And I
thoroughly enjoy the little fish which abound in this
river, especially the catching of them, a pursuit in
which I am most diligent, and very fond of handling
both hook and net. What shall I tell you of my
clothes and shoes ? They are changed from top to
loe. Not such was my old fashion. ' Mine,' I say,
because of the surpassing vanity with which, while
observing the proprieties, I trust, and holding fast
by seemliness, it was my pleasure of old to shine
among my equals. Now you would take me for a
ploughman or a shepherd, though all the while 1
have finer clothes here with me, but there is no
reason for changing my dress except that the
clothes which I choose to wear first get dirty first.
My old bonds are loosed, and the eyes which I once
sought to please are closed for ever ; and I think
that, even if they were still open, they would not
now have their wonted mastery over me. But in
my own eyes I never look so well as when loose-
girt and free. And what can I tell you of my
dwelling ? You might take it for the house of Cato
or Fabricius. There I live with a single dog and

J

VAUCLUSE

163

omy two servants. I gave the slip to al! the rest
in Italy, and would that I had given them the slip
on the journey so that they could never get back to
me, for they are the one hurricane that wrecks my
peace. My bailiff, however, lives in the adjoining
house, always at hand whenever he can be of
service, but with a door that can shut off his
quarters at any moment, if I feel the least symptom
of boredom at his being always in waiting.

" Here I have fashioned me two little gardens,
the most apt in the world to my fancy and desire ;
should I try to picture them to you, this letter
would be long drawn out. In a word, I think the
world scarce holds their like, and if I must confess
my womanish frivolity, I am in a huff that such
beauty should exist anywhere out of Italy. The
one I always call my Transalpine Helicon, for it is
bowered in shade, made for study as for nothing
else, and consecrated to my Apollo. It lies close
to the pool in which the Sorgue rises, beyond which
is only a trackless crag, quite inaccessible except to
wild animals and birds. My other garden lies close
to my house ; it has a better-tilled appearance, and
BromS's nursling (Bacchus) has his favourite plant
there. This, strange to say, lies in the middle of
the beautiful swift river, and close by, separated
only by a little bridge at the end of the house,
hangs the arch of a grotto of natural rock, which
under this blazing sky makes the summer heat im-
perceptible. It is a place to fire the soul to study,
and I think not unlike the little court where Cicero
used to declaim his speeches, except that his place

i64 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

had no Sorgue flowing by it. Under this grotto,
then, I sit at noon ; my morning is spent on the
hills, my evening in the meadows, or in that wilder
little garden, close to the source, where design has
embellished nature, where there is a spot in mid-
stream overshadowed by the lofty crag, a tiny spot
indeed, but full of lively promptings by which even
a sluggard soul may be goaded to high imaginings.
What would you have ? I might well spend my
life here, if it were not at once so far from Italy
and so near to Avignon. For why should I try to
hide from you my twin weakness ? Love of the
one soothes my sorrow and plucks at my heart ;
hatred of the other goads and exasperates me, and
seeing that the loathsome stench of her breeds
plague throughout the world, is it any wonder if
her too near neighbourhood pollutes the sweet air
of this little country-side? It will drive me away
from here ; 1 know it will. Meanwhile you know
my mood. The one thing I long for is the sight of
you and my few surviving friends ; the one thing I
dread is a return to city life. Farewell."

Only a few months after this letter was written,
the faithful farm-bailiff, Raymond Monet, who had
been truly a friend as well as a servant to his
master for many years, died, and Petrarch, then at
Avignon, wrote to the Cardinals Talleyrand and Qui
de Boulogne, asking them to sanction his immediate
return to Vaucluse. Regulus, he says, asked leave
to return from Africa at a critical moment to look
after his farm at home on account of his bailiffs
death, and Gnteus Scipio similarly asked leave of

A

VAUCLUSE

■65

£nce from Spain to portion his daughter. "Now
I," says Petrarch, writing on January 5th, "may
support my appeal for leave of absence by the
precedent of both these great generals ; for by my
bailiffs death yesterday not only does my farm run
the risk of neglect, but my library, which is my
adopted daughter, has lost her guardian. For my
bailiff," he goes on, "though a countryman, was
gifted with more than a townsman's forethought
and refinement of manners. I think earth never
bore a more loyal creature. In a word, this one
man by his surpassing fidelity compensated and
made amends for the sins and treacheries of the
whole race of servants, as to which I have not only
to make daily complaint by word of mouth, but
have sometimes put my complaints into writing.
And so I had given into his charge myself, my
property, and all the books which I have in Gaul ;
and whereas my shelves contain every sort and
size of volume, mixed big and little together, and I
myself have often been absent for long periods,
never once on my return have I found a single
volume missing, or even moved from its proper
place. Though unlettered himself, he had a devo-
tion to letters, and he took special pains with the
books which he knew I valued most. Much hand-
ling of them had by this time taught him to know
the works of the ancients by name, and to dis-
tinguish my own small treatises from them. He
would beam with delight whenever I gave him a
book to hold, and would clasp it to his bosom
with a sigh. Sometimes under his breath he

i66 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

would call upon Us author by name, and, strange
as it may sound, the mere touch of the books
gave him an enjoyable feeling of advancement
in learning. And now I have lost this excellent
guardian of my property, with whom for fifteen
years I have been wont to share all my troubles,
who was to me, so to speak, as a priest of Ceres,
and whose house served me for a temple of
fidelity. Two days since, in obedience to your
Eminences' summons, I came away, and left him as
I thought slightly indisposed. He was an old man,
it is true, but, as Maro says, of a hale and green old
age. Yesterday at evening he left me, called hence
to attendance on a better Master. May He grant
uninterrupted repose to his soul after the many
labours of his body here. His one prayer to God
was for repose. This he seeks at Thy hands; deny
him not this, O Christ. Grant him to dwell no
longer in my house, but in the house of the Lord,
to regard the Lord's pleasure, not mine, and to
have his conversation in His temple, instead of in
my fields, where he laboured many years with
limbs hardened to cold and heat alike. In my
service he found toil ; in Thine let him find rest.
At Thy command the bonds of his old prison-house
have been loosed and he has come to Thee.

"One of my servants, who happened to be present
at his death, brought me the sad news as quickly as
possible, and arriving here late last night, told me
that he had breathed his last, after making frequent
mention of my name, and calling with tears on the
name of Christ. I grieved sincerely, and my grief

VAUCLUSE

■67

would have been still more bitter, had not the good
man's age long since warned me that I must look
for this bereavement.

" So I must go. Give me leave, 1 pray you, most
eminent Fathers, and let me go from the city where
I am of no service, to the country where I am
wanted, and where I am more anxious about my
library than about my farm."

Great as were the joys and sorrows of life at
Vaucluse, they were far from monopolising Pet-
rarch's attention. His spirit had regained its buoy-
ancy, and once more he threw himself heart and
soul into the great drama of Italian politics. The
years 1 35 1-3 were fruitful in episodes of that
drama. The war between Venice and Genoa, the
pacification of Naples, the appointment of a Com-
mission to regulate the government of Rome, and
the imprisonment and release of Rienzi at Avignon,
the death of Clement VI, and the election of
Innocent VI to succeed him, all belong to these
eventful years.

With the struggle for the supremacy of the sea
Petrarch had no very direct concern, but no one
who valued the safety of Europe, least of all an
Italian patriot, could see without alarm the two
great maritime republics wasting their strength on
internecine war, while the weakness of Constanti-
nople and the constant growth of the Moslem power
might at any moment create a situation of urgent
peril to the West. Clement was probably a shrewder
politician than those who saw only the pleasure-
loving side of his nature suspected ; he did his best

i68 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

to bring about peace, and it may have been at
his instigation that Petrarch, whose letters re-
ceived a consideration that would not now be
accorded to the appeals of even the most dis-
tinguished amateur diplomatist, wrote in terms of
eloquent entreaty and fervid exhortation to the
rulers of both states. But neither formal nor in-
formal diplomacy availed to stay the war. In
February, 1352, the fleets had a drawn battle.
Eighteen months later, the Venetians under Pisani
gained their overwhelming victory off Sardinia. A
shameful flight saved the Genoese Admiral Grim-
aldi and a third of his force ; the rest of the
Genoese fleet was either sunk or captured. For
the moment Venice remained mistress of the
Mediterranean.

In the affairs of Naples Petrarch took a closer
personal interest, though apparently no active share-
Here again the Pope was chief mediator. After
months of negotiation, in the course of which he
did a stroke of business for the Papacy in buying
the Countship of Provence from Queen Joanna,
Clement succeeded in bringing the hostile factions
to terms. The King of Hungary recognised Lewis
of Tarentum, Joanna's cousin, paramour, and second
husband, as King of the Two Sicilies, and for a
while the land had peace. Lewis was now first in
rank at Naples ; but first in influence and power
stood the King's tutor in the art of statesmanship,
the great Florentine, Niccol5 Acciaiuoli, who be-
came Grand Seneschal of the realm. Though not
yet personally acquainted with Petrarch, AcciaiuoU

VAUCLUSE

i6g

was excellently disposed in his favour, for he
knew intimately the whole circle of his Florentine
friends : his own brother Angelo, in fact, the Bishop
of Florence, was included in that circle, and enjoyed
Petrarch's hospitality at Vauciuse in the spring of
1352. In the Grand Seneschal, Petrarch saw a not
unworthy successor to King Robert, alike as a ruler
and a patron of letters.

Interesting as were the politics of the maritime
republics and of Naples, the magic word Rome
evoked a far deeper sentiment. Since the fall of
Rienzi, confusion had reigned in the city. The
Jubilee had brought a kind of truce, for the Romans
thoroughly understood the value of their city as a
place of pilgrimage. But Clement was too sensible
to take the temporary toleration of his Legate as a
sign of settled order, and appointed a Commission
of four Cardinals to advise him on the necessary
reforms. In the autumn of 1351 this Commission
asked Petrarch to lay his views before them, and
he did so in two letters, which illustrate and empha-
sise in a remarkable manner the sincerity and con-
sistency of his views. Writing under a full sense
of responsibility, and writing to Princes of the
Church, whose sympathies would naturally be with
the ruling class, he repeats the conviction expressed
five years earlier to Rienzi, that the Baronial Houses
were the eternal enemies of Rome's peace, and that
if good government was to be made possible in the
city, the niitgistracy must be recruited, not from
them, but from the ranks of the people.

Only a few months after this correspondence with

I70 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

the Cardinals, Rienzi himself appeared in Avignon,
a prisoner in peril of his life. He had taken
refuge with the Emperor : the latter cannot be
severely blamed if he showed scant sympathy with
the upstart who had summoned to his bar the heir
of the Cssars. The Pope wanted to have Rienzi ;
the Emperor had no pleasure in keeping him : to
the Pope he went. The chamber which was his
prison is shown to all who visit the Papal palace,
and they are told that he was released from it at
the intercession of his friend Petrarch. There is
no written authority for this gracious legend, but
two things are certain : Petrarch was in a fury of
indignation at Rienzi's imprisonment, and the reason
which he assigns for his release could have no
validity outside Crotchet Castle. He was in a fury
because, as he thundered, Rienzi was arraigned not
for his bad deeds, but for his good ; not for betray-
ing the cause of Rome, but for having dared to
I assert her sovereignty. Rienzi was in the grip of
wicked men ; how could he ever expect deliver-
ance ? Hear the astonishing story. Through the
modern Babylon ran a rumour that Rienzi was a
poet What ! A sacred bard lies chained in this
city of culture. Off with his gyves ! And Rienzi
comes out a free man. As history this is a little
thin, and it is pleasant to think that he who cir-
culated it may, after all, have had a hand in the
happy deliverance.

In August, 1 352, occurred a curious little episode,
of which the details are somewhat obscure, though
the main fact is clear. The papal secretaryship was

VAUCLUSE

171

j^in vacant, and two of Petrarch's friends among
the Cardinals used secret influence to get it offered
to him. Again he wisely shrank from the un-
congenial burden, and in his turn took secret
measures to defeat his friends' well-meant but un-
welcome scheme. What reason can there have
been for all this mystery ? Once before the office
had been openly offered and declined ; the same
kind of thing was to happen, formally or informally,
three times more in the course of the next twelve
years. Why this manoeuvre of sap and countersap
now ? Possibly the Cardinals may have wanted to
confront him with z.fait accompli; possibly he may
have feared to wound their susceptibilities by open
opposition. The reasons are all conjectural, but
there is ample warrant for the fact.

This was not the only preferment resigned by
Petrarch in this year. 1 n the autumn he was
appointed to a canonry at Modena, but being
already provided with a sufficient income, he sent
the presentation to Luca Cristiano on October 19th,
and the terms of the accompanying letter in which
he explained his action are a model of that delicate
tact which makes it possible for one friend to accept
a service of this kind from another.

Rienzi had been set free in August, 1352. At
the end of the year the Pope, who had admired his
eloquence, tolerated his power, and profited by his
fall, was no more. For some time Clement had
been in failins^ health. In the spring of the year
Petrarch, who held all physicians for quacks, as
indeed at tliat lime uf the world's history most of

172 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

them were, wrote the Pope a letter warning him to
beware of their practices. This brought on the
poet the hatred of the medical profession, and a
controvery ensued of which we can read only one
side. Our estate would be the more gracious if we
could read neither : to those who love Petrarch best
as a man, he must appear most detestable as a
controversialist. Whether in spite of his physicians'
exertions or because of them, Clement died on
December 6th, 1352, and twelve days later the
Sacred College, spurred to haste by information that
King John of France meditated a visit to their
neighbourhood, chose Stefano Alberti, Cardinal of
Ostia, to succeed him.

Clement's successor took the name of Inno-
cent VI ; to those who regard innocence as
synonymous with ignorance, the choice must have
seemed admirable. It is only fair to add that
the new Pope had a better title to it in the
exemplary austerity of his life. He checked the
licence of the Papal Court, reformed abuses, and
insisted on bishops living in their dioceses ; but his
ignorance was appalling. Here in the middle of
the fourteenth century, at the head of the Church,
which numbered in her ranks five-sixths of the
educated men of Europe, was a Pope who, at the
suggestion of a malevolent Cardinal, seriously pro-
posed to excommunicate Petrarch as a necromancer,
on the sole ground that he was a student of Virgil.
The absurd sentence was never passed ; many of
the influential Cardinals were well affected to Pet-
rarch, and it so happened that his especial friend

VAUCLUSE 173

Cardinal Talleyrand had been instrumental in pro-
curing Innocent's election. But for a moment the
ridiculous accusation was a serious danger, and
however abominable Petrarch may have found
Avignon in the past, its neighbourhood must have
seemed yet more destestable when the rude bigotry
of Innocent had taken the place of Clement's refined
taste and kindly tolerance.

CHAPTER XI

MILAN AND THE VISCONTI

PETRARCH had meant to spend the winter in
Italy, On November r6th, 1352, he started
from Vaucluse in fine weather, which had been un-
broken for many weeks, but he had hardly left the
valley when a gentle drizzle set in, which presently
turned to a heavy rain, and as the day wore on to
a veritable deluge. He took shelter at Cavaillon,
where he found the Bishop indisposed, but declaring
himself cured by the sight of him. Philip besought
him to give up the idea of his journey, and in the
course of the night came news that the roads round
Nice were closed to travellers by armed bands of
the mountaineers. All through the night the rain
fell in torrents, and in the morning Petrarch found
his friend's entreaties, which in themselves had
been nearly enough to turn him, supported by the
fact that "one route was made impassable by war,
and all by flood." It seemed, he thought, as if God
would not have him go forward, and he returned
presently to Vaucluse. In the spring of 1353 he
resumed the project. In April he paid a visit to
his brother Gherardo, whom he had not seen for
more than five years, but of whose courageous

MILAN AND THE VISCONTI

175

conduct, when Montrieu was devastated by the
plague, he had heard an account some two years
before, which had filled him with joy and admira-
tion. Not only had Gherardo refused to desert
the post in which he beheved Christ had set him,
but when the plague came, and brother after brother
fell a victim to it, he spent his whole time nursing
the sick, giving absolution to the dying, and bury-
ing the dead. Then he found himself, with one
faithful dog, the sole survivor of a house which had
numbered over thirty brethren. Marauders came
to pillage the defenceless shrine ; Gherardo opposed
their entrance, and they slunk away abashed.
Then, having saved the sacred edifice and its con-
tents, he set himself to have it repeopled, and
applied to the principal monastery of his Order, not
for any reward or recognition of his services, but to
have new brethren given him and a new prior set
over him. To this brother, whom Dr. Koerting
has aptly called " FVancesco without the modern
elements," the latter had a whole-hearted attach-
ment. From an unsteady, headstrong youth, Gher-
ardo had grown to be a man of singularly resolute
character, and the elder brother, whom his conduct
had formerly inspired with grave anxiety, now
looked with unqualified admiration on his piety and
self-devotion. His visits to Montrieu were rare,
but they evidently gave him unqualified pleasure,
and he warmly recommended the monastery, through
his brother-poet Zanobi da Strada. another of his
Florentine friends, to the favour of Acciaiuoli and
the Court of Naples. From Montrieu he went

176 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

back to Vaucluse, and on April 26th paid what
proved to be his last visit to the city which had so
deeply influenced his fortunes, where so much of his
life had been spent, and which, in spite of its associa-
tions with Laura and with Socrates, he so cordially
detested. He went back to make preparations for
what he intended, as in fact it proved, to be his final
departure from Provence.

Early in May he set out, travelling as he had
come two years before, by the direct route over Mont
Gen^vre. As on his descent from the top of the pass
he left the clouds behind him, and "the soft, warm air,
rising from the Italian valley, caressed his cheek,"
the sight of Piedmont spread out to the eastward
smote him with gladness, and in a poem of eighteen
hexameters he poured out a salutation to "the land
beloved of God, the land of unmatched beauty, the
land rich in wealth and in men, the mistress of the
world, on whom art and nature had lavished their
choicest favours, and to whom he was now eagerly
returning, never again to depart from her." It is
not pretended that in workmanship these lines can
equal the hexameters of Virgil, or even of Politian,
but they are veritably a great lyric, for almost alone
among Petrarch's Latin verses they utter the note
of rapturous inspiration.

This salutation to Italy was written on the spot
It is very probable that the sight of those glorious
valleys stretching away from Mont Gen^vre in-
spired Petrarch also with the idea of his greatest
Italian poem, the Ode lo the Lords 0/ Italy. Various
dates have been assigned to this supreme lyric,

:, but J

MILAN AND THE VISCONTI

177

I

the best choice seems to lie between 1345, the time
approximately assigned by De Sade and Fracas-
setti. when the earlier depredations of the Great
Company inflicted new sufferings on Italy, and
1353 or '354' the time suggested by Gesualdo and
preferred here, when Petrarch, returning to the
valley of the Po, found the princes and republics
of his country bidding against each other for the
service of similar bands of foreign mercenaries.
Every line of this glorious ode burns with the fire
of purest patriotism ; it is a cry of lamentation over
his Italy's wounds, of passionate entreaty to her
princes for union and for peace, and of prayer to
God, wrung from the suppliant's very soul, that
He, who for pity of man came down from heaven,
will turn and look upon the beloved sweet country,
and soften the hard hearts of those who afflict her
with war. Here is the real national hymn of Italy;
for five hundred years it haunted the imagination
of those who dreamed of her unity, gave inspiration
to the counsels of her statesmen, and nerved the
arm of her soldiers. The unsurpassed beauty of
the poem as a lyric is almost equalled by its fruit-
fulness in political result.

If this was, indeed, the time at which the ode
Italia Mia was composed, there is a pathos which
can without exaggeration be called tragic, in the
fact that it coincides with the least excusable error
of Petrarch's life, the one action in which he seemed
to fall below his high standard of patriotism. He
had hardly touched Italian soil, when he accepted
the shameful patronage of the Archbishop of Milan.

tyS PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Of all the ruling families who afflicted Italy In
the fourteenth century, the Visconti were the most
odious. It is true that their fellow -tyrants could
not be excelled in the magnitude of their vices, but
few were so ill-provided with compensating virtues.
The viper was the appropriate cognisance of the
House, and its present head, the Archbishop
Giovanni, habitually goes by the name of the Great
Viper in the pages of Villani's chronicle. In truth
he had just the qualities with which the serpent is
credited — its cunning, its callousness, and its jraison.
If he had not the wanton ferocity of his great-
nephew Bernab6, his cold, deliberate ruthiessness
seemed almost more hateful. That he was a con-
summately able and successful statesman is indis-
putable, but we find no hint in his career that his
lust of power was ever checked by a scruple, or lit
by a ray of magnanimity.

Luchino had died in his bed in January, 1349:
an event not quite so rare in the Visconti family as
in some others. Giovanni succeeded him, and the
power of Milan stood higher than ever. With
Luchino Petrarch had had some amicable corre-
spondence, initiated by the ruler of Milan, who
asked for a copy of verses and some plants from
the poet's garden. Both verses and plants were
sent, accompanied by a letter couched in the courtly
terms of compliment required by good manners in
that age, but giving Luchino not ambiguously to
understand that the encouragement of men of
letters is the chief glory of princes. Now as Pet-
rarch passed through Milan in uncertainty where

THK EyrKSTKJAN STATUK OK HERNAwi VISCONil

i

MILAN AND THE VISCONTI 179

rto go next, Giovanni, " the Lrrcatcst of Italian
I princes," laid on him hantis of friendly compulsion,
' and persuaded him to fix his abode there. From
Petrarch's first narrative, written before he realised
I any need for apology, we gather that the interview
went somewhat as follows : The Archbishop couched
his request in the most flattering terms ; he whose
lightest word was usually treated as a command
\ condescended to ask for Petrarch's presence in
Milan as a favour. Petrarch was on the point of
objecting that he was pledged to work, that he
hated a crowd and longed for quiet, but the Arch-
I bishop anticipated all his objections and answered
them before they were made. He would place at
I his disposal a healthy house in a delightful part of
', the city, with the church of St. Ambrose on one
side, and a view over the plain to the Alps on the
other ; could the country offer a more peaceful re-
treat? His time should be his own, he should be
I absolutely his own master; no service should be
I expected of him, no obligation imposed. Petrarch
I yielded, and yielding incurred a reproach from
I which his warmest partisans cannot wholly clear
Phim.

The news brought utter dismay to some of his
f best friends. There is indeed no hint of disapproval I
I from Socrates ; to that loyal and affectionate heart, we
1 may suppose, whatever Petrarch did seemed right.
But the Florentines could not possess their souls in
even a show of patience, and no one who realises
I the situation can refuse them his sympathy. A good
■■Florentine could not help hating Milan, and no better

r8o PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Florentines than Boccaccio and Nelli ever breathed
the Tuscan air. It was not merely that Florence
and Milan happened to be inveterate enemies; their
antagonism was derived not from a mere accident
of history, but from a conflict of principles. What-
ever the faults of her government, the great Guelf
■ Republic stood for civic liberty; whatever the merits
of Milanese order, the name of Milan's rulers sym-
bolised tyranny. In going to live with the "Great
Viper," the master whom they revered seemed to
them, not without reason, to have fallen below the
most elementary standard of patriotism. From
Nelli came a letter of remonstrance, the tenor of
which can be pretty accurately inferred from Pet-
rarch's reply. Boccaccio took a rod from the
master's own cupboard ; he employed Petrarch's
favourite device of allegory and in a pastoral
dialogue upbraided "Silvanus" (as Petrarch often
called himself in compositions of this kind) for
deserting and betraying the nymph Amaryllis (Italy)
and giving himself into the hands of her oppressor,
Egon (the Archbishop), the false priest of Pan, a
monster of treachery and crime. Petrarch replied
to his friends in letters which give the genuine
explanation of his conduct, but do not touch the
main issue. The real gist of the remonstrance is
that he, the Italian patriot, has gone over to the
enemy's camp. He replies that the Archbishop is
a very powerful and very courteous prince, that
great men's commands have to be obeyed, especi-
ally when they take the form of entreaties, and that
he feared to incur the reproach of arrogance by

MILAN AND THE VISCONTI i8i

refusing. All this is quite sincere: he had a delicate
sensitiveness which made it very difficult for him
to say " No" to those who went out of their way to
be kind to him, and the Archbishop was a man to
whom few people would dare to refuse anything for
which he condescended to ask. He meant to have
the World's Laureate as an ornament to his Court,
and he got him. By sheer strength of will and
suppleness of method he dominated Petrarch ; but
he did not win him, as Azzo and Jacopo had won
him, by the heart, even though, like every one else,
he showed him only the best side of his nature. The
last thing a man could do with Giovanni Visconti
was to love him.

One consideration, at which Petrarch just hints,
may have had legitimate weight with him. The
Archbishop offered him a "healthy" house; with
the Great Plague fresh in remembrance that was an
inducement worth thinking about, and strangely
enough Milan had hitherto entirely escaped the
pestilence. Petrarch was a very brave man ; many
a lime we have seen him hazard his life for a whim,
and go unarmed through a country swarming with
brigands. But the bravest man may prefer Goshen
to a charnel-house, and having no special duty to
combat the plague, he might avoid it if he could.

So in Milan he stayed and believed himself his
own master. The Visconti kept their promise, and
put no constraint upon him. They knew their man;
he would have wriggled free from chains, but the
silken bonds of courtesy and kindness held him fast.
If he attended a public ceremony, it was as an

i82 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

honoured guest ; if he represented his patrons
abroad, it was as chief spokesman of a distinguished
embassy. The close scrutiny of his friends' eyes
discerned that his residence in Milan was derogatory
to his highest ideals, but it must be acknowledged
that in the view of society at large those very
ideals were exalted by the exceeding honour done
to his person.

His first attendance at a state ceremonial nearly
cost him his life ; he rode out in the train of the
Visconti brothers to meet the new papal legate,
Cardinal Albornoz. Night was falling when the
Cardinal arrived, and the darkness was increased
by clouds of dust from the two cavalcades. Pet-
rarch rode forward in his turn to make obeisance,
and was resuming his place when something
frightened his horse; the animal jibbed and backed,
and dropped his hind-legs over the precipitous and
unguarded edge of the road. Petrarch was saved
from a fall that would probably have been fatal by
the promptitude and dexterity of young Galeazzo
Visconti. The horse hung on by his fore-feet only,
and Petrarch fell off into some brambles, which
arrested his fall for a moment, and just gave Gale-
azzo time to grasp him by the hand and pull him up
in safety. The horse too, lightened of its burden,
I managed to scramble up. Petrarch might well
I consider that he owed his life to Galeazzo.
I A few weeks later he attended a far more impos-
ing if somewhat melancholy ceremonial. As already
mentioned, the crushing defeat of the Genoese off
the mouth of the Loiera took place in August.

I

MILAN AND THE VISCONTI 183

Wounded in her honour by the flight of her admiral,
and crippled in power by the loss of more than half
her best ships, the city turned upon her rulers, and
after driving them from power, took the desperate
course of seeking help from Milan. The Arch-
bishop's aid was to be had only on his own terms ;
the price of it was the lordship of the city. Men
scarcely believed their ears when it was known that
the Genoese were ready to pay the price. Even
Petrarch, the Archbishop's honoured guest and
counsellor, was shocked for a moment at the proud
city's humiliation. But the shameful bargain was
struck, and on October loth the Archbishop re-
ceived from the ambassadors of the city the sub-
mission of Genoa. He made them a dignified and
encouraging reply ; he had got what he wanted,
and was not the man to grudge stately phrases.
It must be allowed that he had the graces of ex-
ternal deportment. It must be allowed also that he
did not neglect his share of the bargain. He made
serious efforts to negotiate an honourable peace
with Venice, and Petrarch was among the envoys
entrusted with the delicate task. The victorious
republic rejected his overtures with contempt, and
a year later suffered in her turn the retribution that
waits on arrogance. In November, 1354, the
Genoese admiral, Paganino Doria, with a new fleet,
sailed up the Adriatic, and surprised and utterly
destroyed the naval force of the Venetians at Porto
Lungo. The war was over, and it was Venice who
in the following year had to sue for peace. The
strategy and tactics of this great achievement were

i84 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Doria's. but men noted that the turning point in
the struggle had been the intervention of Milan.
It seemed as though Giovanni Visconti had only to
put his hand to an enterprise, and its success was
assured. But by a strange coincidence, neither he
nor the great Venetian Doge, Andrea Dandolo,
lived to see the issue of the struggle ; Dandolo died
in September, and Giovanni Visconti on October 3rd.

He was succeeded in his sovereignties by his
great-nephews Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo,
who kept the territories of Milan and Genoa as
a common possession, and divided the rest of the
inheritance. Their accession was made the occasion
of a magnificent ceremony, at which Petrarch
delivered the inevitable harangue, and was much
disgusted at having it interrupted in the middle by
an astrologer, who declared that this was the one
propitious moment for executing the deed of parti-
tion. The brothers continued to him the full
measure of their great-uncle's favour, and Bernabo
shortly afterwards asked him to stand godfather to
his infant son Marco. The enduring result is a
birthday poem in Latin hexameters, of which the
first few lines are not without elegance, but which
presently degenerates into a catalogue of the in-
credible number of persons who, unfortunately for
the conscientious student of Petrarch, have borne
the name of Marcus.

A rather paintul incident of a private character
has to be noticed as belonging to this period. In
1352 the boy Giovanni, though only fifteen years
old, had been appointed to a canonry at Verona,

A

\

MILAN AND THE VISCONTI 185

and his father had sent him from Vaucluse to take
possession of it, commending him to the care of his
old schoolmaster Rinaldo and of Gulieimo da Past-
rengo. Now, probably owing to his connection
with the Visconti, Petrarch lost the favour of Can
della Scala, Mastino's heir ; and Giovanni, who
may have given a handle to his enemies by some
youthful irregularity of conduct, was deprived of his
benefice, and returned to Hve with his father.

The year which brought this domestic anxiety
brought also a notable addition to Petrarch's hbrary.
In January, r 354, he received from the Greek general,
Nicholas Sygerus, who was equally distinguished as
a soldier and a scholar, a manuscript of the Homeric
Poems in Greek, probably the first copy of Homer
sent from East to West since the severance of the
Churches. His delight in the possession of this
treasure furnishes a touching illustration of his
enthusiasm for the classics. " From the extremity
of Europe," he writes, "you have sent me a present,
the worthiest of yourself, the most acceptable to me,
the noblest in intrinsic value that it was possible

for you to send What gift could come

more appropriately from a man of your talent and
eloquence than the very fountain-head of all talent
and eloquence ? So you have given me Homer,
whom Ambrose and Macrobius have well named
the fount and origin of all divine imagination. . . .
Your gift would be complete indeed, if only you could
give me your own presence together with Homer's,
so that under your guidance 1 might enter on the
strait path of a foreign language, and enjoy your

i86 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

of I

wish.

gift in the happy fultilment
Your voice, if only I could hear It, would both
excite and assuage the thirst of learning that pos-
sesses me ; but it reaches not my ears, and without
it your Homer is dumb to me, or rather I am deaf
to him. Nevertheless, I rejoice in the mere sight
of him ; often I clasp him to my bosom and exclaim
with a sigh, ' Oh, great man ! How do I long to
understand thy speech!' . . . Take then my thanks
for your exceeding bounty. Strange to say, Plato,
the prince of the philosophers, was already in my
house, sent to me from the West. . . . Now
through your generosity the Greek prince of poets
joins the prince of philosophers. ... If there is
any book that you wish to have from me, I beg-
you to let me make a return for your great kind-
ness ; use your right to command me. For I, as'
you see, use my right over you ; and since success
in begging breeds boldness in the beggar, send me
Hesiod, if your leisure allows, send me, I pray you,
Euripides."

CHAPTER XII

CHARLES IV AND PRAGUE

rel:

CHARLES of Luxemburg, Prince of Bohemia,
son of the bhnd King John, was elected King
of the Romans in 1346, a few weeks before his
father's death at Cr^cy. Strictly speaking, he should
have borne no higher title previous to his corona-
tion, but the stringency of the old rule had become
relaxed by courtesy, and we find him constantly
[dressed as Emperor from the first. His election
LS the result of a papal intrigue, carried out dur-
ing the lifetime of his predecessor Lewis "the
Bavarian," who had been deposed and excom-
municated by three successive Popes. Naturally it
was displeasing to those who considered that an
Emperor's main function should be to annoy the
Pope. Lewis had lived up to this simple view of
his duties ; he had even, as we have seen, revived
the good old imperial practice of setting up an
Anti-Pope. Charles IV was the Papacy's effective
rejoinder, nearly twenty years delayed, but the
Papacy could afford to wait. Militant German
iperialisls nicknamed him "the Priests' Kaiser,"
lut after the death of Lewis in 1347 his title was
Generally accepted.

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Now, if ever, the White Guelf ideal of Pope and
Emperor ruling the world jointly seemed to have
its chance. Yet it was not even seriously tried. It
is easy for us, who have been enlightened by the
genius of Macchiavelli, to comprehend the failure ;
for since the days of the great Florentine it has
been an accepted axiom that human nature is the
most important factor in politics. The White Guelf
theory never had a chance precisely because of its
logical perfection. Admirable as an embodiment
of ordered thought and philosophic synthesis, it
lacked just the one thing needful, in that it made
no allowance for the friction of human passions.
There was just a chance that Petrarch might see
this. He had broken loose from the methods of
the schoolmen, and had taken the classical writers
for his models. If you had said to him that systems
were useless unless you could get suitable men to
work them, he would have accepted the statement
without demur, and would have quoted you a dozen
instances of the fact from Livy, and as many
illustrations of the principle from Cicero ; in the
last year of his life he might even have cited his
own admirable treatise Concerning ike Best Methods
of Administering a State. But he did not realise
this truth in practical politics, or see how fatal it
must be to his hopes, precisely because he stood too
near to the Middle Ages, and his own life too closely
resembled the lives of the men who had evolved
the theory.

Not that he was its bigoted adherent. As we
have seen in considering his relations with Kienzi,

CHARLES IV AND PRAGUE 189

|he sovereignty of Rome was to him the supreme
end of politics, and lie would have welcomed any
means by which that end could be attained. Per-
sonally his warmest sympathies were with a revival
of the Roman Republic ; but this had been tried and
had failed ; and with mingled feelings of disillusion-
ment and hope he took up again the White Guelf
idea, and wrote letter after letter to Charles IV,
urging him by every incentive which could stimu-
late his ambition or rouse his conscience to come to
Italy and cherish his rightful bride. The first of
these letters is assigned by Fracassetti to February,
1350, but contains a passage which makes 1351
seem the more probable date. At the latest, it
was written only about three years after Rienzi's
fall. Frequently during the intervening years there
were rumours that the Emperor was coming to
taly, but as frequently the Emperor put off the
visit with what seemed to Petrarch frivolous excuses.
The poet spared neither rebuke nor reproach, but
the Emperor bore him no grudge for his plain
speaking. When at last he arrived in Italy, he
invited him to spend a week at his Court, and even
sent Sagramor de Pommieres, an officer of his body-
guard, to escort him thither.

Charles had come to Italy with the full assent of
the Pope, to whom he had promised not to spend
more than the actual day of his coronation in Rome,
and to respect the papal sovereignty over the States
of the Church. Early in November, 1354, he
arrived in Padua, where Jacopo's sons and succes-
sors received him with every honour, and were

I go

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

rewarded with the title of Vicars Imperial. Then
came his first disillusionment : Can della Scala shut
the gates of Verona a^-Binst him. The Visconti
were of course hostile, for, being but a novice in
diplomacy, he had made no secret of his wish to
form a league against them. He went to Mantua,
where the Gonzaga received him well, and where
he expected to find ambassadors from the cities of
Tuscany. Here was his second disappointment; as
the Pope's ally, he had found himself unwelcome to
many of the old Ghibellin families ; now he was
to learn that his imperial title deprived him of all
countenance from the Guelf republics ; of the
Tuscan states only Pisa, pathetically faithful to
her traditions, sent envoys to welcome once more
an Emperor to Italy. The " Priests' Kaiser" had
fallen between two stools. But Charles was no
fool ; he could listen to unpalatable advice and
profit by experience ; and In Italy the lessons of
statecraft, if learnt at all, were learnt quickly.
Charles agreed with his adversaries while he was
in the way with them. He no longer talked of
taming the Visconti's Insolence ; on the contrarj', he
proposed to receive the Iron Crown of Lombardy
at their hands.

Petrarch's visit must have been useful to Charles
in this change of front. If he wanted an occasion
for opening communications with Milan, here was
one which could be either kept free from the taint
of politics, or made to serve as an introduction to
them. The visit was also a great success from the
point of view of the visitor. He travelled through

CHARLES IV AND PRAGUE 191

the coldest weather in living memory, but the
warmth of his welcome made ample amends.
Charles received him with frank courtesy, and to
his vast delight kept him talking night after night
into the small hours. Charles asked him about the
Lives of Illustrious Men. Petrarch seized his op-
portunity, and while telling him that it was not yet
ready for publication, promised to dedicate it to him
if his actions were such as to deserve it, and if he
himself were spared to finish it. And to keep him
in mind of the great men whom he was to imitate,
Petrarch made him a present of some very beautiful
gold and silver medals of the C^sars, among which
the portrait of Augustus especially almost seemed
to have the breath of life. We must credit Charles
with rare magnanimity, or perhaps it were juster to
say we must credit Petrarch with rare charm, when
we find that at the end of the discourse which
accompanied the gift the Emperor urged his
lecturer to go with him to Rome. Petrarch's ac-
count of the visit, written in a letter to Laslius,
leaves us with the impression that both he and
Charles must have had an insatiable appetite for
talk.

Presently the Emperor moved on to Milan and
became the Visconti's guest. This was not a happy
visit ; Galeazzo excelled in the art of polite dis-
courtesy, and while nothing was done that must
necessarily provoke a rupture, nothing was omitted
that could bring home to the Emperor the sense of
his own weakness and the power of his hosts. On
the Feast of the Epiphany, 1355, Charles received

192 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

the Iron Crown of Lombardy, not at Monza. but in
the church of St. Ambrose at Milan. When he left
the city, Petrarch, though unable to accept his in-
vitation to go to Rome, accompanied him as far as
the fifth milestone beyond Piacenza. He went on
to Pisa, where Laelius waited on him with a letter
of introduction from Petrarch, and so to Rome,
where he received the imperial crown on April 4th.
He returned by way of Pisa, where he was pleased,
on May 14th, to bestow the Laurel Crown of Poetry
on Zanobi da Strada, Niccolo Acciaiuoli's secretary,
who has been already mentioned as a friend and
frequent correspondent of Petrarch. The meaning
of this strange freak has never been quite clear.
The obvious suggestion is that it must have been
meant as a snub to Petrarch, perhaps a hint that
there were other poets, who might be less exigent
in the matter of an Emperor's deeds before they
praised him ; but the history of the three men's
personal relations makes against this easy explana-
tion. There is no hint of anything but extreme
cordiality between Charles and Petrarch, and only
the merest conjecture that the latter's amicable
relations with Zanobi were ever interrupted. Be-
sides, Charles was not a fool in literature any more
than in politics ; he had taste and judgment ; and
he would have been fully alive to the absurdity of
setting up this painstaking grammarian, capable
private secretary, and respectable writer of verse as
a rival to Petrarch. Such folly could only have
emphasised the latter's superiority to all living
poets. Perhaps the explanation may be simply that

S-

CHARLES IV AND PRAGUE

'93

the Emperor wanted a laureate of his own making,
and took what he could get. P'rom Pisa Charles
made his way northwards, and, to Petrarch's in-
dignation, returned to Germany in June. His
Italian tour had given him two crowns, and rid
him of a few illusions.

During the whole month of September Petrarch
suffered from an unusually violent and prolonged
attack of the tertian fever, to which he was always
liable at that season. He rose from his bed at the
beginning of October so weak in body that he could
hardly hold a pen, but with his temper exasperated
afresh against the physicians. He took up the old
feud with renewed acrimony, and the violent Invec-
tive against a Physician is the unhappy result. It
is not to be doubted that much of the medicine of
that day was mere quackery, and a calmly reasoned
exposure of the knavery of many practitioners and
the folly of their dupes, put forth by a man of Pet-
rarch's influence, might have served as a useful aid
in the promotion of serious research ; but the in-
temperate vehemence of Petrarch's invective, though
it seems to have commanded Boccaccio's admira-
tion, could only defeat its own object. Not only
the quacks whom he was justified in attacking, but
the earnest students who were labouring to better
the rudimentary science of their time, must have
been set against the man who thus vilified the
whole profession. Yet in spite of this furious dia-
tribe Petrarch had pleasant relations with more
than one physician to whom he was personally
known ; and in later years the eminent Dondi dell'

194 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Orologio enjoyed his intimate friendship, and
possessed the precious Virgil after his death.

Meanwhile a tragedy had happened in the Vis-
conti family. On September 26th Matteo, the
eldest brother, was found dead in his bed That
his brothers should be accused of poisoning him
was only natural ; but even in that age men heard
with horror that the bereaved mother was the
loudest accuser of her surviving sons. The brothers
denied the charge, and their partisans plausibly
attributed Matteo's death to debauchery. Their
guilt is doubtful, but they certainly divided the
inheritance.

About this time the whirligig of Italian politics
brought Petrarch a new friend. For two years the
warrior-priest, Cardinal Albornoz, had been fighting
and negotiating as the Pope's Legate in Italy, and
so successful had he been alike in arms and in
diplomacy, that he had brought the greater part of
Romagna and the March, as well as the ancient
States of the Church, either into direct obedience to
the Holy See, or to an admission of its overlord-
ship. Among the great houses reduced to obedience
were the Malatesta of Rimini, whom the Legate
deprived of the great bulk of their usurped pos-
sessions, while allowing them to retain Rimini itself
and three other cities, as vassals of the Church.
Their diminished possessions hardly gave scope
enough to the more ambitious younger members of
the House, and Pandolfo Malatesta, who was at
once the best soldier and the best scholar of the
family, took service with Galeazzo Visconti as

\

CHARLES IV AND PRAGUE 195

general of his cavalry. Before knowing Petrarch
personally, he had conceived so great an admiration
for him, that he commissioned an artist, whose
name is unknown to us, to paint him a portrait of
the poet. The picture is declared by Petrarch to
have been at once expensive and bad, but he was
undoubtedly flattered by the compliment and pre-
disposed to like Pandolfo. They met in Milan, and
a warm and lasting friendship resulted.

But clients of the Visconti could not hope for
the continuous enjoyment of each other's society.
The general of cavalry in particular was not left
long in idleness. To narrate the intrigues of these
years in detail would require a good-sized volume ;
briefly, it may be said that leagues against the
Visconti were perpetually being formed, dissolved,
and formed again. In the winter of 1355-6,
Giovanni Paleologo, Marquis of Montferrat, and
Milano Beccaria, tyrant of Pavia, both of them once
the allies and now the opponents of the Milanese
Princes, joined in organising such a league. The
Marquis's share in its operations was to excite a
rebellion against Galeazzo in Piedmont, and Pan-
dolfo Malatesta found plenty of occupation for his
sword in fighting the revolted cities. A still more
serious incident connected with the same aflfair soon
afterwards took Petrarch on a distant errand of
diplomacy. It was more than suspected that the
Emperor, who had not forgotten the humiliation
inflicted on him the year before, was secretly sup-
porting the Visconti's enemies, and still more alarm-
ing rumours were current of a proposed invasion of

196 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Italy by the allied forces of Bohemia, Hungary, and
Austria. The Visconti had no mind to apologise
for the past, but their hands were full enough for
the moment, and partly to put the Emperor in good
humour, partly to spy out his intentions, they dis-
patched an embassy to him, with Petrarch as its
orator. It is not to be supposed that the practical
business of the embassy was entrusted to him ; he
was to be its ornamental figure-head, and we can
see from the letter in which he tells Nelli of his
appointment that he quite grasped the situation.
He had showered reproaches on Charles at the
time of his departure from Italy; now he would
catch him in his own kingdom, and have at him
again for his ignoble and most unimperial flight
"So," says he, "whether my journey be for any
profit or no, at any rate I shall be my own ambas-
sador." To tell the king to whom you are accredited
that he is but a poor creature would not strike a
conventional diplomatist as the best way of pro-
pitiating him ; but once again we may take it that
the Visconti knew their men.

Petrarch set out on May 20th, and again enjoyed
the pleasure of having Sagramor de Pommieres for
a travelling companion. They went first to BSle,
where they expected to find the Emperor, but
Charles was not there, and, after waiting some
weeks, they started for Prague. They had left just
in time. Only a few days later the whole basin of
the Rhine was shaken by a tremendous earthquake.
Over eighty castles are said to have been destroyed
by the successive shocks, which continued at in-

CHARLES IV AND PRAGUE 197

tervals for many months ; and in every town from
Bdle to Treves houses fell and the citizens had to
camp in the fields. The first shock, which Petrarch
and his companions just escaped, was especially
severe at Bale, and laid almost the entire city in
ruins.

The ambassadors found the Emperor in Prague,
and Petrarch's colleagues must have noted with
satisfaction that his hands were much too full of
German business to permit of his present interven-
tion in Italy. He, whose own election had been
secured by every device of trickery, was busy with
his famous Golden Bull — the Reform Bill of Imperial
Elections. Also, however unworthy a successor he
may have been to Augustus in politics, he was
diligently following his example in the embellish-
ment of his capital.

We have no details of this visit to Prague. We
know only that Petrarch was received with un-
diminished cordiality by the Emperor, and that he
spent much time in the congenial society of two
great ecclesiastics of the Court, Johann Oczko,
Bishop of Olmutz, and Ernest von Pardowitz,
Archbishop of Prague. Petrarch's acquaintance
with these two distinguished men, begun in Italy,
now ripened to friendship, and many of his later
letters are addressed to them. But perhaps the best
fruit of his embassy was the intimacy with Sagramor
de Pommi^res, which resulted from their companion-
ship in travel, and grew so close that a year or two
afterwards he could speak of Sagramor as "privy
to his every thought and act." The visit brought

ig8 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

him also the dignity of Count Palatine, conferred
on him by the Emperor some months after his
departure, and later still the honour of an auto-
graph letter from the Empress Anna, informing him
that she had been safely delivered of a son.

He returned to Milan at the beginning of Sep-
tember, and declared to Laelius that the more he
travelled abroad the more he loved Italy.

In the following year (1357) occurred an incident,
the memory of which Petrarch's admirers would
willingly let die. During the winter events had
happened at Pavia which curiously anticipated by a
century and a half Savonarola's celebrated revolu-
tion in Florence. An eloquent and earnest monk,
named Jacopo Bussolari.set himself to combat from
the pulpit the vices and bad government of the
Visconti. So far, his sermons were heard without
distaste by the Beccaria, but their attitude changed
when, from denunciation of the Milanese tyrants,
Bussolari proceeded to crusade against tyranny
and vice in general, with pointed allusions to the
occupants of the adjoining palace. The Beccaria
tried the usual tyrant's answer to criticism ; but all
their plots to assassinate Bussolari were discovered,
and the successive discoveries raised him from the
position of a popular preacher to that of a national
prophet, saint, and hero. At last he ended a sermon
of surpassing eloquence by bidding the people
organise a free government under leaders whom he
designated by name. The people rose as one man
at his call, and a republican government was in-
stalled under the eyes of the Beccaria, who were

J

I

CHARLES IV AND PRAGUE 199

expelled one by one from the liberated city. In
desperation tliey turned to their old allies and
recent foes, the Visconti, surrendered to them their
fortified country houses, and organised a plot to
put them in possession of the city. This plot also
failed, and for a time Pavia enjoyed the blessings
of freedom. Surely this was a movement with
which he who applauded Rienzi should have sym-
pathised. Alas! Pavia was not Rome, and the
iron-willed Visconti held Petrarch in a grip far
stronger than that of the House of Colonna. At
Galeazzo's instigation, he managed to persuade
himself that Bussolari was a mere adventurer, a
charlatan, who had deluded the people with empty
phrases, that he might use them as his instruments
to work out the selfish aims of unbridled ambition.
He wrote Bussolari a letter of insolent reproof and
impertinent exhortation, which we can hardly read
for shame and would gladly delete from the manu-
scripts which it deforms. Affection for Galeazzo,
to whom he considered himself indebted for his life,
is the one admissible palliation, and it is pitiably
inadequate. True, that liberty in the fourteenth
century did not imply democracy, and that Petrarch
would conscientiously have pronounced mob-rule
the worst of tyrannies. Still Bussolari's cause was
that of civil liberty, self-government, and moral
purity ; Galeazzo stood prominent, the champion
of a tyranny which encouraged every vice. Surely
the man who could bid Charles live up to the
standard of Augustus might have used his influence
with Galeazzo to soften, tf he could not turn aside,

200 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

his wrath against Bussolari, But communication""
with the Visconti had corrupted Petrarch's manners;
Nelli and Boccaccio were justified of all their fears.
Let it be added, however, that this is the single
instance of Petrarch's degradation ; in no other case
did he accept a commission from the Visconti which
he could not honourably fulfil.

CHAPTER XIII

DOMESTICA
1357-1360

SO far as regards Petrarch's connection with
public affairs, the years to be dealt with in this
chapter are the least eventful of his life. But they
are notable for some interesting personal experi-
ences, and, above all, as the period at which the
poet himself took a review of his past life and work.
They offer, therefore, an admirable occasion for
a similar review by his biographer, and an attempt
will be made in the following chapter to take advan-
tage of the opportunity.

First, however, we must notice the few domestic
events which belong to the period.

One of these shows Petrarch at his very best.
A most distressing thing had happened in the circle
of his friends. After all these years of unbroken
affection, Socrates and Laslius had quarrelled; worst
of all, they had quarrelled about Petrarch. Some
slanderous liar had told L^elius that Socrates had
represented him as opposing Petrarch's interests at
Avignon. Ltelius was furious, Socrates heart-
broken, Petrarch in a state of mind which without
hyperbole he describes as agony. The moment he
heard of the miserable business, he sat down and

202 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

wrote L^elius a long, impetuous letter of lovift
remonstrance with him for having beheved the lie,
and of most loving entreaty that he would believe
the truth now and make it up with Socrates. He
was your friend, says Petrarch, even before he was
mine. We have lived eight-and -twenty years to-
gether, the three of us, in the closest union of souls.
You know him incapable of such baseness ; how could
you believe it of him for a moment ? You should
have thrust the calumny from you, as Alexander
did when his friend and physician was accused of
being bribed to poison him, and he drank off the
draught before showing the accusation to his friend.
" Friendship is a great, a divine thing," he goes on,
"and quite simple. It requires much deliberation.
but once only and once for all. You must choose
your friend before you begin to love him ; once you
have chosen him, to love him is your only course.
When once you have had pleasure in your friend,
the time to measure him is past. 'Tis an old pro-
verb that bids us not to be doing what is done
already. Thenceforward there is no room for sus-
picion or quarrel ; there remains to us but this one
thing — to love." Compare with this admirable
passage the equally beautiful sentence in a letter to
Nelli, written a few years earlier: "In my friendships
I practise no art, except to love utterly, to trust utterly,
to feign nothing, to hide nothing, and, in a word, to
I pour out everything into my friends' ears, just as it
/ comes from my heart." Petrarch's pleading was
irresistible, and to his delight he heard before long
that Lselius had no sooner read his letter, than he

DOMESTICA

203

had gone straight with it to Socrates, and with
tears and embraces they had knit afresh the ancient
bonds of affection. The friend who had brought
them together was as happy in their reconciUation
as he had been miserable at their estrangement.
" All your hfe you have done me pleasure on plea-
sure," he wrote to L^lius, " but never a keener
pleasure than this."

This was by no means the only time in his life
that Petrarch played the part of peacemaker among
his friends. We find him, for instance, doing the
same office for Nicol6 AcciaiuoU and Barili. and
with equal success ; but the matter never went so
near his heart as in this quarrel between Lfclius
and Socrates. "Till this day," he wrote in this
letter to Ltclius, " we had lived together not merely
in harmony, but, as one might say, with only one
mind in the three of us." And nothing can be
more charming or more touching than the grace
with which in the letter of congratulation he gives
Lxlius all the credit for his prompt act of reconcilia-
tion, and is satisfied for his own part with the pure
delight of his friends' reunion. Whatever may have
been his qualities or his defects as an Ambassador
of State, the world has not seen his superior in the
delicate diplomacies of friendship.

In the congratulatory letter to Lcelius, there is
a passage which makes it clear that once again
Petrarch's friends at the Papal Court had proposed
to get him the offer of the papal secretaryship, and
once more he had been able to defeat their well-
meant intentions, this time without mystery or

204 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

secret machination. He was less than ever inclined
for the office. He had fewer friends among the
Cardinals than of old, and Pope Innocent, as we
have seen, had been violently prepossessed against
him at the beginning of his reign. That temper,
indeed, must have changed already, or Ltclius and
the rest could not have dreamt of getting the
appointment for Petrarch. Still, Innocent was not
his friend as Clement had been, and he says himself
that his position at the Curia was very different
now from what it had been a dozen years before.
The post was given to Zanobi da Strada, at whose
promotion Petrarch sincerely rejoiced, reckoning that
he had now a new friend in Avignon, and regretting'
only that Zanobi would have no more time for
poetry. The language of this passage sufficiently
refutes the absurd calumny, for which there is not
a scrap of first-hand evidence, that Petrarch was
jealous of Zanobi.

To avoid the tediousness of perpetually recurring
to the subject of the papal secretaryship, it may be
mentioned here that Pope Innocent's old hostility
to Petrarch presently changed into so cordial a feel-
ing towards him, that in the last year of his pontifi-
cate he made him a direct and formal offer of the
post, and that a year later his successor, Urban V,
repeated the offer. Petrarch was still resolute in
declining, but none the less the incident of 1361
shows both men in an agreeable light. The Pope
who could thus revise his own judgments must
have possessed a sense of justice rare among bigots,
and there must have been something singularly

J

DOMESTIC A

205

Ittractive about the man in whose favour such judg-
ments could be reversed.
In the early autumn of 1358 he suffered an acci-
Fdent which may be narrated in his own words.
"You shall hear." he writes to a friend, "what
I a. trick Cicero, the man whom I have loved and
; worshipped from my boyhood, has just played me.
I possess a huge volume of his Letters, which I
I wrote out some time ago with my own hand because
there was no original manuscript accessible to the
L copyists. Ill-health hindered me, but my great love
f of Cicero, and delight in the Letters, and eager-
' ness to possess them, prevailed against my bodily
weakness and the laboriousness of the work. This
is the book which you have seen leaning against
the door-post at the entry to my library. One day,
while going into the room thinking about some-
thing else, as I often do, I happened inadvertently
I to catch the book in the fringe of my gown. In
I its fall it struck me lightly on the left leg a little
I above the heel. 'What! my Cicero,' quoth I,
bantering him, 'pray what are you hitting me for?'
He said nothing. But next day, as I came again
the same way, he hit me again, and again I laughed
at him and set him up in his place. Why make
a long story? Over and over again I went on
suffering the same hurt ; and thinking he might be
cross at having to stand on the ground, I put him
up a shelf higher, but not till after the repeated
blows on the same spot had broken the skin, and
a far from despicable sore had resulted. I despised
it though, reckoning the cause of my accident of

2o6 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

much more weight than the accident itself. So I
neither gave up my bath, nor put any restraint on
myself in the matter of riding and walking, but just
waited for the thing to heal. Little by little, as
if hurt at my neglect of it, the wound swelled up,
and presently a patch of flesh came up, discoloured
and angry. At last, when the pain was too much
not only for my wit, but for sleep and rest, so that
to neglect the thing any longer seemed not courage
but madness, I was forced to call in the doctors,
who have now for some days been fussing over this
really ridiculous wound, not without great pain and
some danger to the wounded Hmb, as they insist,
though I think you know just what reliance I place
on their prognostications either of good or evil
At the same time 1 am bothered with constant
fomentations, and am cut off my usual food, and
obliged to keep still, to which I am quite un-
accustomed. 1 hate the whole business, and especi-
ally 1 hate being obliged to eat sumptuous fare.
But health is now in sight, and you may hear of me,
as I have of you, that I am well again, before
knowing anything of my having been ill. ... So
this is how my beloved Cicero has treated me ; he
long ago struck my heart, and now he has struck
my leg."

Before the wound was fully healed, two days in fact
before the above letter was written, he paid a visit
which is notable as showing how enthusiasm for the
revival of learning was spreading through different
classes of Italian society ; it also illustrates the lines
of social cleavage in fourteenth- century Italy.

J

DOMESTICA

207

I

There lived at Bergamo a goldsmith named
Enrico Capra, an old man who had grown rich by
skill in his handicraft, for he was a working smith,
and not to be confounded with the banker gold-
smiths of Florence or Genoa, As a young man
he was little versed in letters, but had always a
natural inclination to them. Late in life he heard
of Petrarch's reputation as a scholar ; his imagina-
tion was kindled, and he resolved to give up every-
thing for study. Petrarch was his hero. His
highest ambition was now to be a humble scholar
in the studies of which Petrarch was the master.
He consulted his idol, and Petrarch, with that
practical good sense which is so disconcerting to
people who would like to put poets and sensible
men into separate pigeon-holes, advised him strongly
to stick to his trade. " For," said he. " it is late for
you to strike out an entirely new line, and your
private affairs may suffer." In this one thing, Capra
was deaf to his hero's advice. He gave up his
business and set himself to school. One supreme
desire now possessed him, to have the honour of
entertaining Petrarch as his guest, if it were but for
a single night. Petrarch's fashionable friends would
have dissuaded him from the visit, representing
that it was beneath his dignity to be a tradesman's
guest He knew better, and was too much a
gentleman to be ruled by them. He has often been
accused of courting great men, and it is perfectly
true that he did like to sit on the right hand of
princes. But what he liked in it was the feeling
that he had power to influence the powerful. He

2o8 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

was no vulgar devotee of mere riches or mere rank.
He would have been worse than a barbarian, worse
than a wild beast, he declares, if he had refused
Capra's request. The man carried the fervency of
his desire writ plain in eyes and brow. So to Ber-
gamo he went, and with him rode some of his fine
friends, curious to see how the goldsmith would
deport himself The goldsmith was above every-
thing anxious that Petrarch should not be bored ;
he abounded in conversation, and the fine gentle-
men had to acknowledge that the excellence of their
entertainment made the way seem short. When
they reached Bergamo it seemed as if the whole
town had turned out to receive Petrarch. There
were the governor, the captain of the militia, and
all the city dignitaries, pressing on him a public
reception at the palace and entertainment at the
house of one of the chief men. Again Capra
trembled with apprehension, but Petrarch knew
what good manners and good feeling required of
him. He was the goldsmith's guest, and with civil
excuses to the great folks he went to the gold-
smith's house. There he found such entertainment
as Prague itself had not provided for him. He
dined off gold plate, and slept in a bed hung with
imperial purple, in which, vowed his host, no other
man had ever slept, or ever should. There were
plenty of books too, " not a mechanician's books,
but those of a student and a most zealous lover of
letters." Petrarch might have stayed more than
one night if he could have been left alone with his
delighted host, but he ran away from the otherwise

_

DOMESTICA

2og

inevitable civic festivities. The governor and the
town councillors, unable to keep him as a guest, ac-
companied him a great part of the way home, but
it is pleasant to know that they were outridden by
Enrico Capra, who saw his hero safe to the very
threshold of his home.

Petrarch spent a good part of the winter at
Padua, where he had business to transact, and at
Venice, where he stayed for pleasure ; and in the
spring of 1359 he enjoyed the exquisite pleasure
of a visit from Boccaccio. We feel a kind of pride
in human nature when we see how completely their
difference of opinion about Petrarch's residence in
Milan had failed to impair their friendship. Sil-
vanus cannot have enjoyed being told that his
new friend Egon was a blood-thirsty renegade ;
but Nelli and Boccaccio might say to him what
they liked. To them he had given his heart, and
he lived up to his own fine sentiment, that when
once you have given your heart, there is nothing
left for you but to love. Moreover, he held that
there should be no concealments between friends ;
it was Boccaccio's duty, then, to show him all that
was in his heart. Boccaccio's attitude seems to
have been equally pleasing. He did not retract
his opinion, but he had had his say, and the decision
did not lie with him. His relations with Petrarch
illustrate the modesty of which genius may be
capable : he constantly insisted on taking the place
of a disciple ; and he would not be fatuous enough
to suppose that the master must always see eye to
eye with him. So this loyal Florentine made his

2IO PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

pilgrimage to the city which he hated and the friend
whom he loved. There had been a constant inter-
change of letters and poems between them since
their last meeting. Boccaccio had sent on one
occasion St. Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms,
on another some works of Cicero and Varro copied
with his own hand for his friend's library. Then
we find Petrarch acknowledging the receipt of
several letters, and alluding to one of his own which
had been lost in transmission. And Boccaccio
having protested against being called a poet, Pet-
rarch rallies him on his petulance. "A strange
thing," he says, "that you should have aimed at
being a poet only to shrink from the name," And
from what follows, we may gather that Boccaccio
felt legitimately aggrieved that his poetical work
had not won him the recognition of the laurel. We
gather too that the Milanese visit was a project
of long standing. At last in the early spring of
1359 it was realised, and Petrarch writes to NelH :
" I should send you a longer letter, but that I am
prevented by a want of time which is of my own
making, to wit, through the most delightful com-
panionship of our common friend, to whose visit
there are only two drawbacks — the shortness of it
and your absence. The pleasant days have slipped
away silently and unperceived. But our friend's
own voice will tell you what my pen has no time
for ; you can trust implicitly in his report, for he
knows perfecdy my every thought, my every action,
my manner of life, in a word my whole self, and all
my little haps and hopes."

DOMESTICA 211

Boccaccio left about the end of March in wild
weather, but reached Florence without accident.
Soon afterwards he sent Petrarch a copy of the
Divina Commedia, together with a poetical Latin
letter, in which he begged " Italy's glory and his
own dear friend and single hope " to accept, read,
and admire the great work of the poet-exile, who
first showed the world of what achievements in
verse his mother-tongue was capable ; his brow
deserved the laurel which it failed to obtain ;
Florence, the great mother of poets, bore him and
takes her place of pride among cities under the
championship of his glorious name ; in honouring
him, his brother-poets do honour to themselves and
their craft. In this last sentiment, or in the exhorta-
tion to read Dante, Petrarch may have seen ever
so delicate a hint of the common belief that he was
jealous of the latter's fame, though Boccaccio had
spared no possible words of compliment to himself
His answer is quite candid, and gives a faithful
picture of his sentiments. The supposition that he
was jealous of the elder poet's fame rests on a far
different basis from the silly gossip that he envied
Zanobi. "Jealousy" of Dante is not, indeed, the
right word, but want of appreciation must be
admitted. He is quite sincere in saying to Boc-
caccio that " Dante easily carries off the palm among
writers in Italian," and this is not the language of
jealousy; nor is his protestation that he "admires
and venerates" Dante less sincere. But the pith
of the whole matter lies in that passage of uncon-
scious self- revelation, where he protests that his

312 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

admiration of the great Florentine, as of every one
else, is critical, and really implies a. much higher
compliment to its object than the indiscriminate
gush with which his ignorant worshippers bedaub
their idol. Exactly ; Petrarch admired Dante
"critically," but he read him very little, and radical
difference of temperament made it impossible th^
he should be in sympathy with him.

The autumn of 1359 brought a very sad incident
in Petrarch's domestic life. For years Giovanni's
character and conduct had been a source of painful
anxiety to his father. At last the young man's
faults of temper, aggravated by the elder's faults of
management, resulted in an open breach. We
have only Petrarch's side of the story, and not very
much of that, but it is enough to show us quite
clearly the cause and the nature of hts unhappy
relations with his son. He was a man predisposed
to affection, predisposed also to count his geese
swans. He was the last man in the world to belittle
the virtues or exaggerate the sins of those who
belonged to him. There can be no doubt that the
lad was slothful, sullen, and prone to a disorderly
life. Only by very judicious handling could his
better qualities, of which Petrarch's friends dis-
cerned the rudiments, have a chance to win the day.
Judicious handling was exactly what Petrarch could
not give him. Sarcasm and sermonising are the
very worst tools for fashioning the character of such
a boy, and Petrarch, honestly anxious to shame
Giovanni into industry and instil into him a virtuous
ambition, was at once sarcastic and didactic. The

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DOMESTICA

213

circumstances of their relationship probably aggrav-
ated the evil. Petrarch, as we have seen, had
procured letters of legitimacy for Giovanni, which
of course involved an admission of paternity, and
his friends knew the whole story. But the word
"son" was seldom if ever used in the intercourse
of daily life, and though Nelli, to whom the lad
paid an apparendy happy visit at Avignon in 1358,
spoke of him as Giovanni Petrarca. his position
was one which only devoted love and tactful sym-
pathy could have rendered tolerable. Now, in these
years, Petrarch, sick of town life, had found himself
a retreat entirely to his mind, which he called
Liiemum after Scipio's famous Campanian villa,
a few miles outside the city walls. While he was
living there a robbery occurred in his house at
Milan, which was traced to members of his own
household. Coincidently, Giovanni was guilty of
misconduct so grave that Petrarch expelled him
from his house. This is all that can be said with
certainty, but we may surely infer that Giovanni
was found to be a participator in the robbery, if not
its instigator.

It may have been this unhappy occurrence which
finally determined Petrarch to give up his house in
Milan, and transfer himself and his possessions to
the Benedictine monastery of San Simpliciano,
where, though only just outside the city, he could
enjoy all the pleasures of life in the country, and
where his precious books would, in his absence, be
under the guardianship of the brothers. He chose
his rooms with judgment. They contained a con-

214

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

venience which had been wanting in his town hou
— a little secret door which he could use as a baJl|
hole to escape from unwelcome visitors. Here 1
settled on November 3rd, and here in the foUowin
August he received a visit from Niccol6 Acciaiud
with whom, as we have seen, he had long been In
friendly communication, but whom he appears never
to have met till now. The Grand Seneschal ■
an expert in ceremonial ; Matteo Villani even hin
that he carried ostentation to a fault ; and nothii^
was omitted that stately pomp and gracious die
could contribute to mark the homage which he j
to Petrarch's genius. But the pleasantest touch m
the visit was the eagerness with which he pouna
on the poet's books, and his unwillingness to te
himself away from them,

CHAPTER XIV

THE FOUNDER OF HUMANISM-
PETRARCH'S WORK AND ITS RESULT

IT was in 1359 that Petrarch faced that worst
ordeal of a writer's life, the revision of his
papers. The letter to Socrates, which serves as
preface to the collection of Fantiliar Letters, shows
him in a retrospective mood of rather melancholy
sentiment. " We have tried wellnigh all things,
my brother, and nowhere is rest When are we to
look for it? Where to seek it? Time, as the say-
ing goes, has slipped through our fingers. Our old
hopes lie buried in the graves of our friends. It
was the year 1348 that made us lonely men and
poor ; for it took away from us treasures which not
the Indian or the Caspian or the Carparthian Sea
can restore. . . ■ Now what thought you are taking
for yourself, my brother, I know not ; for my part,
I am just making up my bundles, and, as men do
on the eve of a journey, am looking out what to
take with me, what to share among my friends, and
what to throw into the fire ; for I have nothing to
sell." So he dived into the rusty chests, and pre-
sently found himself "ringed round with heaped
piles of letters, blockaded by a shapeless mass of
paper." His first impulse was to save bother by
21s

2i6 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

throwing the lot into the fire ; and after a Httle
indulgence in the pathos of retrospect, he began
the work of destruction. " A thousand or more
compositions, some of them stray poems of every
kind, the rest familiar letters, were thus given over
to Vulcan's revision, not without a sigh indeed, for
why should I be ashamed to own my weakness?"
While these were burning, he bethought him of
another bundle lying in a corner, and containing
letters many of which had already been transcribed
by friends. These he thought would give little or
no trouble, so he spared them, and in fulfilment of
an old promise resolved to dedicate the prose to
Socrates, the verse to Barbato. Here one might
well suppose the story of the Eputolce de Rebus
Familiaribus and of the Episiolce Poe/ias to be
complete ; but he who expects finality little knows
his Petrarch, What follows may serve as a char-
acteristic instance of his method of work ; he was
for ever polishing, correcting, interpolating. Two
years after writing the preface he nominally closed
the Familiar series with a second dedicatory letter
to Socrates. " With you I began." he writes, "with
you I finish ; here, my Socrates, you have what you
asked for. ... I began this work in youth. I finish
it in old age, or rather I am still continuing what
I then began. For this is the one pursuit of mine
to which death alone will put the finishing touch.
How can I expect to cease from chatting with my
friends till my life ceases ? . . . Whatever I may
write in this kind henceforward will be classed in
another volume under a title derived from my time

A

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THE FOUNDER OF HUMANISM 217

of life, since my friends are so fond as to forbid my
withholding any of my writings from them." Even
this was not the final arrangement. Socrates died,
probably before receiving the letter just quoted,
and the collection, made as a token of devoted
friendship, became its pathetic record. As such
Petrarch once more revised it, and while doing so
actually inserted a few letters belonging to the four
intervening years. At last, in 1365, with the help
of one of his pupils, he arranged the series practi-
cally as we have it to-day. He meant it to contain
350 letters; in Fracassetti's edition, which is the
most complete, it contains 347 ; but possibly some
of those which Fracassetti published as an appendix
were intended by Petrarch to have a place in the
body of the volume. The collection is divided into
twenty-four books, of which the last contains the,
Letters to Illustrious Men of Antiquity ; the rest,
Petrarch tells us, are " for the most part " in chrono-
logical order, but the qualifying words require a
pretty liberal interpretation. Besides these, he pre-
served some other letters which, to avoid repetition
and tediousness, he kept by themselves ; these
formed the nucleus of the single book of Various
Letters, intended to contain seventy and actually
containing sixty-five epistles. The earliest letter of
all was written in 1326, the latest in 1 365 ; but sub-
stantially the series extends from 1331 to 1361,
with which year the series of Letters written in
Old Age begins. Of the authorised prose letters,
we have thus three classes — the Familiar, the
Various, and the Senile. In addition to these, a

2i8 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

book is extant of Letters without Title {Sine
Tituid), diatribes against the corruptions of Church
and clergy, which Petrarch kept carefully secret
during his life. But as he preserved the manuscript
of them, we may suppose that he intended them to
be published after his death.

Of all Petrarch's writings the prose letters are
the most important ; of all his Latin writings they
are, by a happy coincidence, the most delightful
reading. As evidence of the events of their author's
life, they outweigh all the other biographical materials
put together, and this is perhaps the least of their
many merits. The extracts given in these pages
must have been ill-chosen and ill- translated if the
reader has not realised from them that the letters
reveal a personality of singularly human interest
and poignant charm. So far as regards mere facts,
Petrarch's habit of revision and interpolation occa-
sionally — though very seldom and only in matters
of secondary importance — tends to weaken or con-
fuse the testimony. But there is not a page, not a
line, not a word, which does not bear the true stamp
of its author's individuality. "If we must needs
keep ourselves before the eye of the public," he
once wrote, " by all means let us show ourselves
off in books and chat in letters." Exactly ; the
man stands revealed in the "chat" of the letters
written to his intimate friends.

Not that he was ever indifferent to style. He
might say with truth that he wrote to his friends
whatever came uppermost in his own mind ; and he
might believe himself to be equally truthful in

I

I

I
I

THE FOUNDER OF HUMANISM 219

saying that he was not carefu! about the adorn-
ment of these familiar talks. But he simply could
not be careless about workmanship ; nature had
given him the instinct for style, and whatever he
wrote must be written with the inborn grace of the
artist

He knew too that a letter from him was regarded
as a literary star of the first magnitude ; eager
friends copied the precious manuscript and circulated
it through Europe. Boccaccio speaks of these
letters with a kind of rapture as equal to Cicero's ;
and though the pronouncement shows that criticism,
which Petrarch had brought anew to the birth, was
still in its infancy, it shows also the extreme import-
ance of the letters in furthering the main work of
their author's life — the revival of learning.

In attributing to Petrarch the initiation of this
mighty movement, a word of caution may be found
in season. People sometimes talk as if history
could be likened to a row of pigeon-holes, and as if
events once classified and docketed as belonging to
pigeon-hole B could thenceforward be regarded as
quite dissociated from the contents of pigeon-hole
A. Of course nobody maintains such an absurdity
in theory, but classification is so useful an aid to
memory, that in practice we are continually tempted
to draw hard-and-fast lines of division. No error
is more fatal to the right understanding of history ;
it robs even definite events of half their meaning ;
much more does it distort and obscure the signifi-
cance of intellectual developments. The life of the
world's mind is like the life of a forest ; birth,

A

220 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

growth, death, go on side by side ; while the forest
is older than its oldest tree, its youngest sapling
may claim an immemorial lineage. When there-
fore we say that Petrarch founded Humanism aiid
inaugurated the New Learning, we do not mean
that he created something out of nothing ; we mean
that he inspired ideas and modes of thought, which
preceding scholars had possessed in their own brains,
but could not communicate to society at large. It
is true that few successive periods are as sharply
contrasted as the Middle Ages and the Renais-
sance ; but even so it is false history to represent
the Middle Ages as a night of pitchy blackness, the
Renaissance as a blaze of unheralded light. Scholar-
ship had never died; our own England furnishes
proof of thaL John of Salisbury in the twelfth
century was as good a Lalinist as Petrarch, and
Robert Grosseteste in the thirteenth had a com-
^.^petent knowledge of Greek. None the lessyit is to
Petrarch, not to his predecessors, that we rightly
attribute the inauguration of the Renaissance ; they
were its forerunners, not its founders ; they handed
down the torch of learning unextinguished ; some
quality in him enabled him to fire the world with it.
His method was not merely to study the classics
as ancient literature, but to bring the world back to
the mental standpoint of the classical writers. To
do this it was essential to spread the knowledge of
those writers as widely as possible, and w«-Jia«e
so ai rJ TUw diligent he and his friends wereJn the
discovery and reproduction of texts. Then men
had to be convinced that the affairs of old Rome

J

I

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THE FOUNDER OF HUMANISM 221

were of vital interest to fourteenth-century Italy, ■
and so Petrarch gave to the world the stimulating
conception of the continuity of history. Lastly, it;^
was necessary to set up again the fallen standard of
criticism. Criticism does not mean fault-finding;
the correction of error is only one of its functions.
Its main business is to look below the surface of
things, to apprehend their true significance, to
appraise their just value. This intellectual faculty^
was conspicuously lacking in the men of the Middle I
Ages, but the classical men possess it in rich abun-
dance. Now of all the classical writers known to
Petrarch he esteemed Cicero " far and away the
chief captain," the wisest thinker, the most discern-
ing critic, the supreme master of style. Saturated
himself with the Ciceronian spirit, he set himself to
diffuse it through Europe. He was no slavish
worshipper even of Cicero ; he paid his great
master the higher compliment of discriminating
enthusiasm. Like all true apostles, he was less
concerned to imitate the manner of his models than
to preach their gospel. This was probably the]
secret of his success ; the revival of classical learn-
ing became in his hands a resurrection of the classi- 1
cal spirit. 'T

Judged as mere compositions, his own Latin
writings fell far short of the masterpieces which
inspired them, and he himself was fully conscious
of their inferiority. Once, he tells Boccaccio, he
had thought of writing solely in Italian, moved
thereto by the consideration that the ancients had
written so perfectly in Latin as to be inimitable.

222 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

This must have been a mere passing thought ; from
earliest youth onward he felt instinctively that to
write the best Latin he could was the way to pro-
pagate the Roman culture.

This sound instinct explains the depreciatory
tone in which he sometimes spoke of his Italian
poems. It is not to be supposed that the man who
could write the Canzoniere was blind to its beauty ;
and the pains which he undoubtedly took to polish
and perfect it show that he appreciated the exquisite
art of its workmanship. He knew, too, how greatly
it was instrumental in winning him the fame that he
loved. But, almost as if he had foreseen the degrada-
tion of the Petrarchist school, he seems to have felt
that not here would lie his real claim to the world's
gratitude. It is easy to go too far, as Petrarch
himself went, in minimising the importance of the
Canzoniere. The poems are quick with the genius
of Humanism, and their revelation of the subtlest
workings of a human soul must have done much to
imbue mankind with a thirst for the study of man.
Still it remains a curious fact that Petrarch's most
beautiful poetry was precisely the least influential of
his writings in furthering his life's work.

It has already been said that the most influential
were the prose letters, which contain samples of
everything that can possibly be put into epistolary
form. Far inferior to them in charm, but almost
equally important in the history of literature, are
the three books of poetical letters. These too
contain an infinite variety of subjects, from im-
passioned appeals to successive Popes for the re-

I

THE FOUNDER OF HUMANISM 223

storation of the Papacy to a graceful description of
his "battle with the Nymphs of the Sorgue" for
the reclamation of a garden for the Muses. It is
hardly possible for us to appreciate these poems at
their full value. Petrarch indeed handles Latin as,'
a living language, his idiom is seldom seriously at'
fault, his diction is choice and his versification
fluent ; his hexameters might quite well be mis-
taken, as actually happened in the case of a passage
from the Africa, for those of some poet of the
Silver Age. But our ears have been attuned to
finer harmonies, and Petrarch's verses cannot stand,
comparison with those of Virgil and Horace, or even
with the graceful compositions of Politian, the most,
accomplished Humanist of the following century.
Moreover, defects of form are much more notice-
able, not to say more irritating, in verse than in
prose ; and rich as are these poetical letters in
biographical and literary interest, we cannot read
them with quite the enjoyment that the prose col-
lection affords.

Yet more tedious to our modern taste, but of
superlative historical value, is the Book of Eclogues,
containing twelve so-called "pastoral" poems. Here /
we have the completes! fusion ever achieved be-
tween the media:val and the classical methods, j
The mediaeval doctrine that poetry is allegory is
taken up by Petrarch, approved, and acted on. But
the allegory takes a classical shape. Arcady, that
migratory realm of poetic fancy, is transported to
Provence ; in the guise of the shepherds and
nymphs who inhabit it we are introduced to Petrarch

224 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

himself — usually designated Silvius or Silvanus,
the lover of forest and hill — to his brother, to
Socrates and Laura, to Popes and Cardinals, to
personifications of the city of Avignon and of the
Spirit of Religious Consolation, and to no less a
personage than St. Peter himself. These all take
part in "pastoral" dialogues, which thinly veil the
expression of the poet's feelings or the discussion of
contemporary events. It is all tiresomely artificial
and unreal ; but Petrarch was persuaded that Virgil
had done just the same in the eclogues on which
his own were modelled. Whatever we may think
of them now, these " pastoral " poems hit the taste
of the day and enjoyed an extraordinary vogue.

Petrarch's most considerable work in Latin verse,
the Africa, remains to be noticed. The story of
its composition has been told already, how it was
conceived and partly written during the first
residence at Vaucluse ; then put aside for a year or
two ; then, under the stimulus of the recent corona-
tion, resumed during the walks in the Selva Plana,
and finished with a rush at Parma. So far as any
work of Petrarch's could be called complete during
his lifetime, we have it on his own authority that
the Africa was completed in 1341. But he did not
hurry its publication ; he kept it by him for the
usual revision, and some years passed before even
his closest friends were allowed a glimpse of it.
Presently he so far yielded to Barbato's importunity
as to send him the passage which narrates the
death of Sophonisba. This is the passage which a
French critic in the eighteenth century declared

i

THE FOUNDER OF HUMANISM

had been stolen from the Punica of Silius Italicus ;
and it is noticeable, as evidence of the quality of
Petrarch's Latin, that the refutation of the calumny,
complete as it is, rests on external evidence and on
the obvious appropriateness of the lines to their
position in the Africa, not on any marked inferi-
ority of Petrarch's hexameters to those of Silius.
With the exception of this detached extract, the
poem was still kept for many years secluded in its
author's library ; and as time went on he came to
regard it with mingled feelings of hope and dis-
appointment. It was to have been the supreme
effort of his imagination, the choice fruit of poetic
genius which should justify in the sight of all
posterity his reception of the laurel crown, the proof
that an Italian of the fourteenth century could write
a Roman epic, not perhaps quite a rival to the
^iieid, but not altogether unworthy of a place
beside it. He never quite resigned the hope that
in the Africa this high ambition was achieved ; but
he suffered grievous pangs of doubt, and more than
once declared his intention of throwing the poem
into the fire, " being far too severe a critic of his
own performances," says Boccaccio.

How far the Africa can be called a success must
depend on our estimate of the effect produced by
it. Judged by a purely literary standard, it must
be pronounced a meritorious failure, though in
justice to its author stress should be laid on the
merit. The conception is a fine one, and the whole
poem is inspired by enthusiasm for Rome. In
Scipio Petrarch was celebrating his ideal hero, and

226 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

it would be hard to find an historical subject more
congenial to epic treatment than the end of the
Second Punic War. Petrarch was fully alive to
these advantages and spared no pains to give effect
to them. Unfortunately the art is a little too
obvious; the epic stage -properties are unmistak-
ably second-hand, the machinery creaks, the magic
spell of illusion is wanting. The whole poem is
reminiscent of the /Eneid and of what Petrarch
knew about the Iliad ; we have a palace decorated
with numberless pictures from the mythology, a
banquet followed by a sketch of Roman history, the
death of an unhappy queen, a prophetic apparition
of Homer. Only a journey to Hades and a con-
clave of the gods are wanting ; instead of them we
have an astonishing scene in heaven, in which the
Almighty expounds Christian dogma to allegorical
impersonations of Rome and Carthage. Here we
touch the root of the whole failure. Petrarch is too
earnest in his plea for Rome to lose himself in his
subject; for once he is too much a missionary to be
quite successfully a poet.

Artistically, then, the Africa is a failure, but
historically it holds a notable place in the revival of
learning. Though it was never definitely "pub-
lished," we must infer from Boccaccio's allusions
that some scholars at least had access to it ; and
the mere fact of its existence inclined men's minds
to consider the possibilities of poetry. They heard
with admiration that a contemporary of their own
had dared to follow in Virgil's footsteps, and to
compose a great epic in the tongue which made it

THE FOUNDER OF HUMANISM 227

the common property of scholars in all lands.
Boccaccio, in the passage already quoted, mentions
the Africa among Petrarch's most important works,
"which," he says, "we will read, and on which we will
comment even during the lifetime of their author."

In the same category Boccaccio places several of
those treatises and disquisitions which also played
an important part in fostering the humanistic spirit.
The books On the Solitary Life and On the ,
Remedies of Good and Bad Fortune in particular '
had in their day an extraordinary reputation and a'
potent influence. Nobody reads them now ; and
that is a pity, for they are much better reading
than a good deal of the literature that has super-
seded them. Petrarch would have based on them
his claim to be ranked as a "philosopher," and the
men of his day would have allowed the claim.
Nothing could more clearly mark the difference
between the new learning and the old. Medieval
philosophy was the science of exact thought, and
had as little as possible to do with literature ; its
burning question, the Nominalist and Realist con-
troversy, was concerned with metaphysical defini-
tions in just that region of metaphysics that lies
nearest to theology. Similarly we find that even
Dante, incomparably the greatest man of letters of
his day, in composing his treatise De Atonarekid,
handled theoretical politics by the deductive method.
Petrarch breaks loose from the austere discipline of
logical process and formula. In his treatises, as'i
in his letters, he takes his readers back to the I
Ciceronian standpoint and invites them to investigate '

228 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

truth by literary methods. Not for a moment does
he exalt style above matter ; what we call " style
for style's sake " is an abomination to him. But he
requires that a man of letters shall employ a good
style for the adornment of good matter ; and if a
man will only take example by Cicero, he shall
know how to achieve the combination.

Exactly the same is true of his work as an his-
torian ; he discards the methods of the chroniclers
and reverts to those of Plutarch, His greatest
work, the Lives of Illustrious Men, is a history of
classical Rome set forth in thirty-one biographies
of great men from Romulus to Caesar. Consider-
ing the materials at Petrarch's disposal, this is a
stupendous achievement ; and the scale on which it
is planned no less than the method of its execution
marks it as the first of modern histories. In the
1874 edition it occupies over 750 octavo pages, of
which over 350 are given to the life of Caesar.
The knowledge that Petrarch was engaged on it
created no small stir in the world ; we have seen
that Charles IV eagerly questioned him about its
progress. Its very excellence, indeed, probably
hastened the day of its supersession ; it must have
kindled an interest in historical research fata! to its
continued use as a textbook. Before the invention
of printing it had been forgotten, and only the
jejune Epitome, on which Petrarch was engaged at
the time of his death, appears in the earlier editions
of his works. Domenico Rossctti, the editor of
Petrarch's lesser Latin poems, unearthed the original
and corrected the erroneous attribution of part of it

A

I

THE FOUNDER OF HUMANISM 229

to Giulio Celso ; Luigi Razzolini published the
complete text with an Italian translation in 1874;
thanks to these two scholars, we now have easy
access to the work which most completely illustrates
Petrarch's sense of the continuity of history, his
zeal for Rome, and the methods by which he
enabled the world to possess once again the splendid

heritage of her literature. ,

Yet when all is said and done,/it is not by the
letter but by the spirit of his Latin writings that
Petrarch holds his rank among the great masters
whose work endures through the ages. He was
not the only man of his day who had the right
instinct for culture or the power to discern the
beauties of classical literature. But he was the one
whom nature had gifted with the magnetic power
to kindle men's zeal and make their enthusiasm
fruitful. His personality impressed itself on the
whole movement ; his very foibles are the character-
istic foibles of his successors. Like him, they were
self-conscious men whose eagerness about their
personal reputation was not free from the taint of
vanity. Many of them carried to excess the faults
which in their master had been the trivial blemishes
of a most lovable character. But if the world
inherited from Petrarch a little restlessness, a little
vanity, a little self-consciousness, he bequeathed to
it also a faculty of right judgment, a tradition of
unwearied diligence, a noble ardour of research. ,
Therefore, and not because he wrote the Africa, I
the Lives of Illustrious Men, or even the Letters, \
we hail him in Boccaccio's phrase as "our illustrious '
teacher, father, and lord."

CHAPTER XV

THE SORROWFUL YEARS OF THE

SECOND PLAGUE— DEATHS OF FRIENDS

1360-1363

IN 1360 the French had at last succeeded in
raising their King's ransom, and the Peace of
Bretigny was signed on May 8th. A considerable
contribution to the ransom had come out of the
coffers of Galeazzo Visconti, who furnished six
hundred thousand florins on condition that his son
Gian-Galeazzo should marry the Princess isabelle
of France. The bargain was duly carried out, and
in October the two children, whose united ages
amounted to twenty-three years, the bride being a
year the eider, were solemnly joined together in
holy matrimony at Milan.

The connection with the House of Valois was a
good stroke of business for Galeazzo, but his first
embassy to Paris was sent on an errand of courtesy
rather than of negotiation. It went in December,
to offer Galeazzo's congratulations to King John on
his return to his capital, and who so fit as Petrarch
to be its spokesman ? At the state reception Pet-
rarch delivered a harangue, in which the leading
theme was the vicissitudes of fortune. To our
modern sensitive ears the subject seems rather a

THE SECOND PLAGUE

231

ticklish c

ople i

I

dish one under the circumstances, but peopi
the fourteenth century underwent too many of these
vicissitudes to be squeamish in talking about them.
And the orator had evidently gauged the taste of
his principal auditors, for the King and his heir
apparent not only pricked up their ears at the men-
tion of fortune, but proposed to recur to the subject
on a less formal occasion, when they even promised
themselves the sport of confuting their learned
guesL So after dinner up came the Prince with
Peter of Poitiers, the translator of Livy, and a
bevy of other scholars at his heels, and demanded
a discourse upon the nature and attributes of
Fortune. A friendly colleague, zealous for the
honour of his fellow-Italian, had given Petrarch
a hint of what was coming, so that he was not
quite unprepared, though he would dearly have
liked time for a peep at some books of reference.
Still he came off with credit, and the company was
not inclined to contest his dictum that Fortune was
a mere name, a popular superstition, but of service
now and then to the learned in the embellishment
of their phrases. The credit of Italy was saved,
and her champion went victorious to bed. The
Prince, who must have been a very glutton of talk,
was for renewing the discussion in the morning,
when the ambassadors had audience of the King.
But the talk went off on other matters, and in spite
of prompting nods and becks from the disappointed
Prince, the topic had not been reached when the
time came to terminate the audience.

Petrarch spent altogether about three months

232 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

over this embassy. After making full allowance
for the probable delays of Alpine travel in mid-
winter, we may suppose that two-thirds of the time
would be spent in Paris, for we do not hear of the
ambassador's staying at intermediate places, but
only of his passing through a country which thirty
years ago had seemed to him a picture of wealth and
prosperity, but which he now found desolate and
barren, with farms deserted and houses tumbling to
decay. A feature of his visit which gave him
especial pleasure was the renewal of his acquaint-
ance with Peter of Poitiers, who had testified his
admiration for him years before by going to seek
him out at Vaucluse.

In March he was back at Milan, and a few
months later received there a fresh token of the
Emperor's esteem and regard. Charles sent him
his own golden drinking-cup, and accompanied the
gift with a letter of profuse compliment in which he
invited him to return to Prague. Petrarch thanked
him for both bowl and letter in the warmest terms,
and very gracefully accepted the invitation of which
he hoped he might avail himself when the unhealthy
season of late summer and early autumn was past
But he did not forget to say roundly, though with
perfect courtesy, that the better course would have
been for the Emperor to accept his invitation lo
come to Italy. "Yours is the upper hand in virtue
of your position, Ca;sar," he writes, "but mine by
the goodness of my cause. You summon me to
honourable — I grant you that — and delightful en-
joyment ; I call you to high emprise, to your

J

I

THE SECOND PLAGUE 233

enforced and bounden duty, which is indeed so
plainly your duty that you may be thought to have
been brought to birth for no other purpose." And
this is only one of many similar appeals addressed
to Charles in the years now under review.

From the middle of 1361 to the end of 1363, the
story is little else than a record of deaths. The
plague, never entirely subdued, broke out again
with a virulence that in some places even exceeded
that of the first terrible visitation. One after
another Petrarch's dearest friends died, till of those
who had made the season of his manhood so
fruitful in affection only three or four remained to
share with him the joys and sorrows of age.
Younger men, indeed, were gathering round him,
who would cherish his later years with filial piety,
but only Guide Settimo, Philip de Cabassoles, and
Boccaccio were left of those who had cheered him
in youth's struggles, or rejoiced, with a joy that no
achievement of their own could have inspired, in
the triumphs of his maturer manhood.

The first bereavement of which he had know-
ledge, though not the first in order of occurrence,
was the death of his son. All Giovanni's misdeeds
had not quenched the flame of natural aiifection in
Petrarch's heart. " I talked of hating him while
he lived," he wrote to Nelli ; " now that he is dead,
I love him with my mind, hold him in my heart,
and embrace him in memory. My eyes look for
him, alas! in vain." The Virgil fly-leaf has this
entry : " Our Giovanni, a man born to bring toil
and grief to me, afflicted me with heavy and con-

234 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

stant anxieties during his life, and wounded me
with pangs of sorrow by his death. For having
known but few happy days in his life, he died in the
year of our Lord 1361, the twenty-fourth of his
age, at midnight between Friday the ninth and
Saturday the tenth day of July. The news reached
me on the fourteenth of the month, at evening.
And he died at Milan, in that unexampled general
slaughter by the plague from which that city had
previously been exempt, but which then found its
way thither and invaded it."

Three weeks later he heard first a vague report
and then only too certain news of a still greater
sorrow, the greatest, indeed, that could possibly
befall him : Socrates had died exactly three months
ago in Avignon, and all this time Petrarch had
been ignorant of his loss. It sounds incredible, but
the note in the Virgil is positive and precise ;
Petrarch, often so careless of chronology, noted
these days of bereavement with the closest exacti-
tude. " In the same year," the note proceeds, "on
the 8th of August, first a doubtful report from one
of my servants on his return from Milan, and
presently on Wednesday the iSth of the same
month sure intelligence brought by a retainer of
the Cardinal Theatine coming from Rome, reached
me of the death of Socrates, my friend and best
brother, who is said to have been dead since last
May in Babylon, otherwise called Avignon. I have
lost my life's companion and comfort ; Christ Jesus,
receive these two and the other five into Thine
everlasting habitations, that as they cannot be

THE SECOND PLAGUE

235

longer with me here below, they may enjoy the
blessed exchange of life with Thee. " And to Nell!
he writes : " Socrates was born in a different part
of the world from ours, but from the very moment
of our meeting, his look, his disposition, and his
worth made us of one mind, so that never from
that day have I known his zeal for my interests
falter or his devotion slacken for a single instant."

The latter part of the year was brightened by an
event of happy omen destined to be happily ful-
filled: Petrarch's daughter Francesca, now eighteen
years old, was married to Francesco da Brossano, a
Milanese of good family, whom Boccaccio describes
as a very tall young man of placid countenance,
sober speech, and refined manners. Francesca and
her husband made their home with Petrarch ; she
was a devoted daughter, Francesco a model son-in-
law ; with them, and by and bye with his little
grandchildren, Petrarch found the chief happiness
of his later years. The eldest of these was the
little Eletla, born in the following year; a boy whom
they named Francesco was born in 1366, but died
only two years later, in the summer of 1368.

Azzo da Correggio died in 1362. For him Pet-
rarch had written his Remedies of Good and Bad
Fortune: the subject was singularly appropriate to
the vicissitudes of that stormy career, but only a
friend's partiality could lay the blame on Fortune.
Azzo had been his own architect, and had himself
to thank when his house lay in ruins. Fortune,
indeed, had done all that she could for him ; he had
brilliant talents, aptitude for statesmanship, extra-

236 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

ordinary charm of manner, and early opportunities
of employing his gifts with advantage. He threw
everything away from sheer over-indulgence in
treacheries. It was not fickleness, but a kind of
natural obliquity which set him scheming, as soon
as he had concluded a bargain, how to get more
gain by breaking than by keeping it. Mere lack of
scruple would not have hindered him ; on the
contrary, morality was nothing accounted of among
the princes of Italy, and a man might very easily
be too nice in his sense of honour to serve them ;
but there comes a point at which a reputation for
treachery makes the traitor still more unserviceable
as a tool than the honest man. Azzo reached that
point, and passed it ; and so he, who might have
ruled Parma and founded a great library, died, a
discredited exile, after losing most of his property
by confiscation, and having to spend nearly all that
remained in ransoming his wife and two children
from the prison in which the third child had miser-
ably perished.

In the early spring of 1362 Petrarch thought of
returning to Vaucluse, and actually started on his
journey, but the disturbed state of Lombardy made
travel impossible, and he was forced to return.
Then came a pressing invitation from the Emperor
to fulfil his promise of visiting Prague ; again he
started, and again the presence of hostile armies
forced him to go back first to Padua, and thence, to
escape a virulent outbreak of the plague, to Venice.
It was just at this time, when he might well have
been excused if the miseries of the past year had

THE SECOND PLAGUE

237

I

broken his nerve, that he gave a signal instance of
his self-possession and freedom from those super-
stitions to which his contemporaries were so prone.
A fanatical Carthusian monk, to whom all secular
learning seemed a snare of the devil, visited
Boccaccio and told him that a certain holy man,
named Peter of Siena, a worker of miracles, had had
on his death-bed a vision telling him that Boccaccio,
Petrarch, and some others would very soon die,
and that if they would escape damnation, they must
amend their lives and give up profane literature.
For once, Boccaccio was thrown off his mental
balance ; in times of pestilence very sane men may
lose their heads, and in Boccaccio's versatile nature
there was a strain of melancholy, which in a man
of narrower sympathies might have degenerated
into moroseness. For the moment he was thoroughly
frightened, and wrote to Petrarch that he must obey
the divinely sent command, get rid of his books,
and devote himself to an ascetic life. Petrarch
replied in a letter which ranks among the noblest of
his prose writings.

You tell me, he writes in effect, that this holy
man had a vision of the Saviour, and so discerned
all truth: a great sight for mortal eyes to see.
Great indeed, I agree with you, if genuine ; but
how often have we not known this tale of a vision
made a cloak for imposture ? And having visited
you, his messenger proposed, I understand, to go to
Naples, thence to Gaul and Britain, and then lastly
to me. Well, when he comes, I will examine him
closely ; his looks, his demeanour, his behaviour

238 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

under questioning, and so forth, shall help me to
judge of his truthfulness. And the holy man on
his death-bed saw us two and a few others to whom
he had a secret message, which he charged this
visitor of yours to give us ; so, if I understand you
rightly, runs the story. Well, the message to you
is twofold : you have not long to live, and you must
give up poetry. Hence your trouble, which I made
my own while reading your letter, but which I put
away from me on thinking it over, as you wilt do
also ; for if you will only give heed to me, or rather
to your own natural good sense, you will see that
you have been distressing yourself about a thing
that should have pleased you. Now, if this mes-
sage is really from the Lord, it must be pure truth.
But is it from the Lord ? Or has its real author
used the Lord's name to give weight to his own
saying? I grant you the frequency of death-bed
prophecies ; the histories of Greece and Rome
are full of instances; but even if we allow that these
old stories and your monitor's present tale are all
true, still what is there to distress you so terribly ?
What is there new in all this ? You knew without
his telling you that you could not have a very long
span of life before you. And is not our life here
labour and sorrow, and is it not its chief merit that
it is the road to a better? Do not philosophers,
writers of Holy Scripture, and fathers of the
Church all agree in telling us that death is more
to be desired than life ? All this you know, and
I am teaching you nothing new, but only bringing
back to your mind the knowledge which it held

THE SECOND PLAGUE

239

before this shock paralysed your memory. This at
least all must grant, that we ought not greatly to
love life, but that we are bound to endure it to the
end, and seek to make its hard way the path to our
desired home. Yes, it is not death that is to be
feared, but life that is to be lived by the Christian
rule. Ah ! but you have come to old age, says
your monitor. Death cannot be far off. Look to
your soul. Well, I grant you that scholarship may
be an unreasonable and even bitter pursuit for the
old, if they take it up for the first time, but if you
and your scholarship have grown old together, 'tis
the pleasantest of comforts. Forsake the Muses,
says he ; many things that may grace a lad are
a disgrace to an old man : wit and the senses fail
you. Nay, I answer, when he bids you pluck sin
from your heart, he speaks well and prudently ; but
why forsake learning, in which you are no novice,
but an expert able to discern what to choose and
what to refuse ; which has become not a toil, but a
delight to you, and which you have skill to use for
the furtherance of knowledge, eloquence, and re-
ligion ? What ! Shall we Christians who know
exactly what to think of the gods of the mythology
renounce the classics and yet read the really danger-
ous books of the heretics? 'Tis the sure mark of
ignorance to despise what it cannot understand and
to try to bar against others the way in which it has
no skill to walk. Learning rightly used does not
hinder, but helps the conduct of life. It is like a
meat which may disagree with the sick, but gives
strength to the heaJthy. All history is full of ex-

240 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

amples of good men who have loved learning, and
though many unlettered men have attained to holi-
ness, no man was ever debarred from holiness by
letters. Good men all have one and the same goal,
but the roads to it are many. Each man travels
his own way, but the lofty ways are better than the
low ; piety with learning is better than piety with-
out it, and for every unlettered saint you can name
me, I will name you a greater saint proficient in
letters.

But if, in spite of all this, you persist in your
intention, and if you must needs throw away not
only your learning, but the poor instruments of it,
then I thank you for giving me the refusal of your
books. I will buy your library, if it must be sold,
for I would not that the books of so great a man
should be dispersed abroad and hawked about by
unworthy hands. I will buy it and unite it with my
own ; then some day this mood of yours will pass,
some day you will come back to your old devotion.
Then you will make your home with me : you will
find your own books side by side with mine, which
are equally yours. Thenceforth we shall share a
common life and a common library, and when the
survivor of us is dead, the books shall go to some
place where they will be kept together and duti-
fully tended, in perpetual memory of us who owned
them.

There is no need to enlarge upon the excellence
of this remarkable letter. It tells its own comfort-
ing tale of sane piety, loyalty to a high calling, and
considerate devotion to a friend. Only a true lover

^ ^^v

THE SECOND PLAGUE 241

of books and men could have written the concluding
sentences.

The libraries, however, were never united ; Boc-
caccio was soon healed of his mental sickness, and
went back to his books with a convalescent's
appetite. But Petrarch made the intended pro-
vision for his own books. He reserved the whole
property in them to himself for his lifetime, but
assigned them not by a mere will, but by a memor-
andum intended to be embodied in an irrevocable
deed, to the Republic of Venice after his death.
There is no evidence that this deed was ever duly
signed, sealed, and delivered ; but the validity of
the bargain is indisputable, for Petrarch accepted
and enjoyed the consideration. The Palazzo
Molina, or Palace of the Two Towers, was assigned
to him, and became his chief residence till war be-
tween Venice and Padua made sojourn in the former
city unpleasant to him. His books therefore should
have gone to Venice, and to this day visitors are
told that they formed the nucleus of the Marcian
Library ; it has also been constantly asserted that
the State which accepted the precious legacy left it
to rot in the packing-cases that contained it. There
is no truth in either of these statements, though
there is some justification for the second in the
condition of some books discovered two hundred
and fifty years later, and erroneously believed to be
Petrarch's. After his death, the Republic was
either unable to claim her inheritance or indifferent
to it, and the real nucleus of the Marcian Library
is the collection bequeathed by Cardinal Bessarion

242 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

in the following century. Petrarch's books were
probably dispersed soon after his death ; somehow
or other a good many of them found their way to
Gian-Galeazzo's library at Pavia, and most of these
are probably now in Paris ; others are to be found
in various Continental libraries.

In September, Innocent VI died. For his suc-
cessor, the Cardinals went outside their own body,
and chose the Abbot Guillaume Grimoard, of
Marseilles. Frenchmen now formed the majority
of the Sacred College. The new Pope was a
Frenchman, supposed to have a special attachment
to his country. Everything seemed to point to the
definite establishment of the Papal See at Avignon.
but a story related by Villani credits Grimoard
before his election with the wish to return to Rome
and to deliver Italy from her tyrants. Whether
there is any foundation for this story or not, the
new Pope certainly took the earliest opportunity to
give a hint of possible change ; he was proclaimed
by the name of Urban V. Joyfully Petrarch hailed
the omen ; that the immediate offer of the secretary-
ship proved the new Pope personally favourable to
him was least among the causes of his gratification.
With enthusiasm he spoke of " this most holy,
liberal, and truly urbane Father, raised to the
highest place of human dignity by the express will
of God, for the comfort of all good men, and the
rescue of the world."

The story of 1363 is again an almost unbroken
record of deaths. Its one happy episode is Boc-
caccio's three months' visit to Venice in the summer.

I

THE SECOND PLAGUE 243

He broujrht Leoiizio Pilato with hini, and we can
imagine the zest with which the friends must have
discussed the teaching of Greek. Hardly had
Boccaccio left when the hand of death fell again
heavily on the diminished circle of Petrarch's
friends. In this sad year the plague took from
him Lrelius, the last survivor of the Lombez-
Avignon group, Barbato, whose friendship with
him dated from the triumphant year of his corona-
lion, and— last-known, but perhaps best-beloved of
all, save only Socrates — Francesco Nelli, his dear
Simonides, for twelve years the sympathetic re-
cipient of all his confidences. " You alone are left
to me of all my friends," he cries, in his agony, to
Boccaccio, and the words were almost literally true.
Guido Settimo and Philip de Cabassoles were the
only exceptions, and it does not appear that either
of them was personally known as yet to Boccaccio.

'.sw

1364-1367

PETRARCH had not yet completed his sixtieth
year, but already he must be counted an old
man. In some respects the second plague made an
even greater change in his life than the first : after
1363 he made no new friendships of the old in-
timate kind with men of his own age. The nearest
approach to such a new tie was the ripening of his
acquaintance with Francesco Bruno, the new Papa]
Secretary, into a feeling of warm attachment and
regard. It is evident that the longer Petrarch knew
Bruno, the better he liked and trusted him. But the
word friendship covers many degrees in the scale of
human sentiment, and though Petrarch and Bruno
were friends in no mere conventional sense, they
never met in the flesh ; however intimate might
be their knowledge of each other's minds — and
Petrarch testifies that it was very intimate indeed —
they could never be on those terms of more than
brotherly affection which we have learnt to associate
with the names of Socrates, L^elius, and Simonides.
For the rest, the names which crop up for the first
time in the Letters written in Old Age are chiefly

THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 245

those of scholars with whom Petrarch exchanged
the courtesies of their common calling, or men of a
younger generation, some of them his pupils in
literature, others the sons of old friends.

The later letters accurately reflect the changed
condition of their writer's life. They contain a much
larger proportion of treatises and disquisitions than
the earlier collection; of really "familiar" letters
there are comparatively few. One long and delight-
ful letter of reminiscences addressed to Guido
Settimo is our principal authority for the events
of Petrarch's early years. There are half a dozen
addressed to Philip de Cabassoles, which show that
neither long absence, nor Philip's promotion, first
to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and then to the
Cardinalate, could weaken the ties contracted in
the intimacy of Vaucluse. Best of all, there is a
whole series of letters to Boccaccio, which prove
that Petrarch had at least one friend left with whom
there need be no shadow of concealment.

If he did not contract new friendships, still less
was he likely to take up new themes or attack the
solution of new problems. The interests of his
earlier years were enough to fill the lives of half a
dozen ordinary men ; they could still satisfy even
his appetite for work, and there is not a sign of
slackening in the ardour with which he pursued
them. Still we may note that the last decade of
his life is a time of strenuous diligence on the old
lines, not of any efl"ort to strike out new ones.

One change observable in his habits w;is entirely
for the better : Venice now counted for much more,

246 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

and Milan for much less in his life. His attad
ment to the republic was of recent growth. Only
ten years before he had been a strong partisan of
Genoa, and had written to Guido Settimo, then
Archdeacon and on the point of being made Arch-
bishop of that city, a letter in which he identified
himself with the Genoese, and spoke of the Vene-
tians as a " haughty and implacable foe." Next he
did his best both by letter and as the Visconti's
ambassador to bring about peace between the two
great maritime states. From the first Venice treated
him with such distinguished honour as must have
inclined him favourably towards her. Presently
came the revolution, by which, after three years'
subjection, Genoa shook off the yoke of Milan :
Petrarch's personal friendship with Guido was now
the only tie that connected him with Genoa, and
there could be no shadow of reason why he should
not cultivate closer relations with Venice. These
were facilitated by his friendship with Benintendi
de' Ravegnani, Chancellor of the Republic. He
accepted her invitation to write Andrea Dan-
dolo's epitaph, paid her frequent visits, and at
last, as we have seen, gave her the reversion
of his library, and accepted the usufruct of a
house as a mark of her gratitude. It was not
surprising that Venice in these days of her
early greatness should cast over him the spell
which for six hundred years has charmed the im-
agination of men. There was a good old Roman
ring about the word Republic which always appealed
to him ; and here was a republic which embodied

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THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 247

his ideas in the stability of her institutions, and
gratified his taste by the dignified splendour of her
civic life. He speaks of her as "that most august ,
city of Venice, the one remaining home of liberty,
peace, and justice, the one refuge left to good men,
the one harbour where the ships of those who
desire to live worthily may still find shelter when
battered by the storms of tyranny and war. 'Tis a
city rich in gold, but richer in repute ; powerful in
her resources, more powerful in her worth ; built on
a solid foundation of marble, and established on the
yet more solid base of civic concord ; girt with the
salt of the waves, and safeguarded by the still
better salt of good counsel." To modern ears,
indeed, it may sound a little strange to speak of the
Venetian oligarchy as the one defender of liberty ;
and when we read of the " civic concord " that
prevailed in Venice, we cannot help remembering
that she had very recently beheaded a doge. But
once again it must be remembered that by liberty
Petrarch means the people's assent to the form of
their government, not their participation in its work-
ing; and the suppression of Marino Faliero's puerile
conspiracy might well be regarded as a testimony to
the strength of the Venetian Constitution, not as
evidence of any weakness inherent in it.

Not that he broke with the Visconti ; far from it
Only from this time he appears in the character of
Galeazzo's personal friend, rather than as a client of
the family. He was as deeply interested as ever
in the politics of Milan as part of the general
politics of Italy; and when a new papal envoy,

248 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Cardinal Androuin de la Roche, came to treat for
peace between Bernabb Visconti and the Church,
Petrarch waited on him at Bologna. His visit was
probably paid just before the conclusion of the
Peace of Lombardy, by which Bernabo Visconti
waived his claim to the possession of Bologna on
condition that Androuin, not Albornoz, should be
deputed by the Holy See to govern St.

The sight of Bologna distressed Petrarch sadly ;
he had known it as a peaceful and opulent univer-
sity town ; now it had been for some years the
bone of contention between rival armies, and the
result to both university and city was deplorable ;
" it looked just like a hungry desert"

He seems to have spent Lent and Easter, as was
now his habit, at Padua ; in May we find him once
more in Venice. The Venetians were now busy
with their expedition to Crete, which was in full
rebellion against their authority. The Peace of
Lombardy enabled them to offer the command of
their forces to Luchino del Verme, one of the most
celebrated condoUieri of the day. For some years
Luchino had been Galeazzo's Captain- General, and
the Milanese successes against the Marquis of Mont-
ferrat must be credited to his skill in leadership.
The peace threw him out of work, and Petrarch,
apparently at the instance of the Doge Lorenzo
Celso, wrote him a letter congratulating him on the
offer of the Cretan command, and urging him to
accept it ; to this practical exhortation he added
some five folio pages of disquisition on the qualities
of a great general, as illustrated by instances from

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THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 249

history, Luchino accepted the command, was
solemnly sworn in, and sailed from Venice on
April I oth ; less than two months afterwards arrived
the news of a decisive victory. On j une 4th
Petrarch was standing with his friend and guest,
the Archbishop of Patras, at the window of his
house on the Riva degli Schiavoni, when he saw a
galley making at full speed for the harbour ; her
oars were wreathed with garlands, and on the prow
stood a band of youths crowned with laurel and
waving flags; evidently she brought news of victory.
The sentinel in the watch-tower gave the signal
that a ship from abroad was entering the port. The
people flocked down to the quays, and soon all
Venice had heard the joyful news that, almost with-
out loss to her own army, the enemy had been
routed, the Venetian captives liberated, the rebel
fortresses surrendered, and the whole island reduced
to submission. Then Venice showed the world
how a great nation rejoices in a great triumph. A
huge procession followed the Doge and chief officers
of state to a solemn thanksgiving in St. Mark's,
and then paraded the Great Square. Games and
sports followed ; the square was packed so close
that it seemed as if the whole people must be met
together, but in all this throng " there was not a
sign of tumult or disorder or quarrelling ; the city
was full of joy and thankfulness, of harmony and
love ; and while magnificence ruled supreme, modesty
and sobriety were not banished from her kingdom."
Two months later, when the victorious general had
returned with his troops, the celebrations were

2 so

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

renewed on a still more elaborate scale ; four whole
days were devoted to a magnificent spectacle, of
which the chief features were an equestrian display
by twenty-four young Venetian nobles.and a tourna-
ment in which Venetians and foreign guests of the
republic took part together. Among the jousters
were included some Englishmen of high rank,
members of King Edward's Court and family, who
had come by sea to Venice a few days before.
The Doge witnessed the spectacle from the marble
platform behind the bronze horses of St. Mark, and
for two days out of the four Petrarch sat in a place
of honour at his right hand. He was invited,
indeed, to attend the whole performance, but excused
himself for the other two days on the ground of his
well-known occupations.

In the following year, as we learn from the
Florentine historian, Scipione Ammtrato, the
Republic of Florence asked the Pope to confer
on Petrarch a canonry either in her own Church, or
in that of Fiesole. The object of the request was,
of course, to induce Petrarch to take up his resi-
dence in Florence, but nothing came of the pro-
posal. The Pope, however, had his own plan for
attracting Petrarch back to Provence, and nomi-
nated him to a canonry at Carpentras. But before
the presentation was actually made, a false report of
the poet's death was circulated in Avignon, and
universally believed. Petrarch hints that this
report, and many others of the same kind, were set
about by the malice of a personal enemy. If this
was the case, the lie for once succeeded in doing its

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THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 251

victim a mischief, for before the error could be j
rectified, Urban had conferred all Petrarch's bene- |
fices on others. Those which he had actually held 1
were of course restored to him as soon as he
was found to be alive ; but as he had never been
formally presented to the canonry of Carpentras, it
remained with its new possessor. It is doubtful
whether Petrarch very much regretted the loss of it.
He had been gratified by the spontaneous mark of
Urban's goodwill, and especially by the considerate
thoughtful ness of a gift which would have brought
him back to the neighbourhood of Vaucluse and
Philip de Cabassoles ; all this he warmly acknow-
ledged in a subsequent letter to Bruno. But as years
went on he became steadily less inclined to leave
Italy ; and when at last, to his exceeding joy,
Urban brought the papacy back to Rome, he could
declare with evident sincerity that the good Pope's
blessing was the only favour that he desired of
him.

The chronology of these years is not quite clear ;
the letters belonging to them are certainly not
placed in exact order of composition, and Fracas-
setti assigns to 1364-5 some events which in this
narrative are placed a year later. But the matter is
one of curiosity rather than of importance. The
general tenor of Petrarch's life throughout the
period is clear enough.

It was probably in the summer of this year that
he first took up his residence in Pavia. That town
had now been for six years in the power of Galeazzo
Visconti. For a short time, indeed, it had seemed

252 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

as though Bussolari might succeed in hi
attempt to found a state on the principles of
morality and freedom, but the powers of evil were
too strong. The Beccaria, acting as Galeazzo's
jackals, made themselves masters of the surround-
ing country. Pavia was closely besieged, and
though Montferrat made many attempts to relieve
it, only a single convoy got through. In October,
'359. hunger produced the usual pestilence, and
Bussolari saw that he must yield. With his own
hand he drew up the terms of capitulation, by which
Galeazzo agreed to respect the new Constitution,
and maintain the people in full enjoyment of their
liberties. For himself, Bussolari asked not so much
as a safe-conduct ; his concern was for the people,
and he had absolutely no thought for his own safety.
Galeazzo signed the treaty, and it is superfluous
to add that he broke it. By inducing Bussolari's
superiors to keep the friar in strict monastic con-
finement, which soon ended in his death, Galeazzo
did not indeed commit any breach of faith ; he only
gave the expected measure of Visconti generosity.
To the citizens of Pavia he was both mean and
treacherous. The liberties which he had sworn to
maintain were at once destroyed, and his breach of
faith was made worse by his subornation of servile
lawyers to furnish him with a pretext for its justifi-
cation. One thing he did for Pavia ; he brought
money into the place. The Milanese historian
Corio says that his wife and family persuaded him
to leave Milan, lest Bernabo. in one of his frenzies,
should offer him violence ; whether this were his

ii

THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 253

motive or not — and Bernabo in a frenzy was cer-
tainly a person to be avoided — Galeazzo left Milan
in 1360, and built himself a magnificent palace-
castle in Pavia. Petrarch was always welcome at
his Court, and from 1365 onwards we find him
making a practice of spending the late summer and
autumn there, and sometimes prolonging his visit to
the end of the year.

This period is rich In letters to Boccaccio. One
of these gives us a glimpse of the Italian minstrels
who went about singing and reciting the composi-
tions of well-known poets. These, if Petrarch's
description is to be trusted, ranked far below the
jongleurs of Provence. The latter, though not to
be confounded with the courtly poets known as
troubadours, were as often as not the authors of
the compositions which they sang or recited. But
the Italian minstrels are characterised by Petrarch
as " men of no great parts, but with great powers of
memory, great industry, and still greater impudence,
who frequent the halls of kings and great men, with
not a rag of their own to cover their nakedness,
but tricked out in the trappings of other men's
songs, and who earn noblemen's favour by their
declamatory recitations of this or that man's best
compositions, especially of such as are written in
the vulgar tongue." Naturally these reciters were
for ever pestering Petrarch for a copy of his latest
poem. In his early days he was in the habit of
gratifying them, but presently took a disgust at their
importunity, and not only refused all their applica-
tions, but would not so much as see the applicants.

254 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES
Occasionally, however, he received visits of thanks
from men whom he had formerly sent away starving
and in rags with a poem to recite, and who now
came back well fed and clad in silk to assure him
that his kindness had saved them from utter poverty.
This made him consider the granting of their
requests to be a kind of alms-giving, and he would
often relax his rule of refusal, especially in favour
of those whom he knew to be poor and honest
When he had speech of these men, he would ask
them why they plagued him with all their importuni-
ties, and especially why they did not go and give
Boccaccio a turn. One day he got an answer which
throws a charming light on the foibles which almost
equally with his great qualities make Boccaccio dear
to us, and on the complete frankness with which he
and Petrarch spoke and wrote to each other. It was
no use going to Boccaccio, it seems, for Boccaccio
was in a huff; he was no poet, he said ; Dante and
Petrarch were your only poets, and no one else need
apply for the title. It is not to be supposed that for
a single moment Boccaccio allowed himself to be
jealous of the reputation of those whom he thus
exalted above himself. He did not claim to beputon
a level with his two great masters ; it was Petrarch
who rightly told him that his place was by their
side. But Boccaccio, like all impulsive men, had
his fits of depression. Poverty pressed hard on him,
and he was amply justified in feeling now and then
that the fruits of his genius and industry deserved
more than they received in the way of material
reward, and perhaps of reputation too. In such a

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THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 255

mood, which we may be sure was only transitory,
he was for throwing his Italian poems into the fire.
What was the use of keeping this stuff, when Italy
had the Divina Commedia and the Canzoniere^
Petrarch's reproof is at once sensible and affection-
ate. He tells Boccaccio about an old man of
Ravenna, who was no mean judge of poetry, and
who always put Dante first, Petrarch himself second,
and Boccaccio third among the poets of Italy. For
his own part Petrarch accepts the verdict ; but if
Boccaccio thinks he ought to have second place, it
is entirely at his service ; there can be no quarrels
for precedence between them. If such a thing were
possible, it would mean that their friendship was
incomplete ; for his own part Petrarch would rather
rank Boccaccio above himself than below, and he
remembers old sayings by his friend which show a
reciprocal affection. The thing that really matters
is not relative position, but excellence of work, and
if any one still remains ahead of him in the race,
let Boccaccio take it as an incentive to go on work-
ing his hardest and producing his best. That is the
kind of goad which stimulates a noble mind to win
astonishing success. Boccaccio indeed has a legiti-
mate grievance against this ignorant and conceited
generation, which is incapable of appreciating such
work as his. He may well have a mind to with-
draw it from so incompetent a tribunal ; but let him
hold his hand, and remember that in the realm of
high learning he may always take refuge from the
vulgarities and ineptitudes of the day.

In the autumn of 1365 Boccaccio went to Avig-

256 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

non as the spokesman of an important Florentine
embassy to the Pope. He returned early in De-
cember by sea to Genoa, and Petrarch hoped that
he might come thence to pay him a visit at Pavia,
but Boccaccio was obliged to go straight home to
Florence. He wrote Petrarch an account of his
stay at Avignon and an expression of his regret at
not being able to visit him ; in reply Petrarch sent
a long letter dated from Pavia on December 14th,
in which he alludes with special pleasure to Boc-
caccio's account of his first meeting with Philip de
Cabassoles. "Greatly do I rejoice," he writes,
"that in Babylon itself you saw those few friends
whom death has spared me, and above all that
veritable father of mine, Philip, Patriarch of Jeru-
salem, a man, to describe him in a brief phrase,
altogether worthy of the dignity to which he has
attained, and not unworthy to attain to that of
Rome, if ever the turn of events should bring him
the office for which his merits fit him. Though he
had never seen you before, he welcomed you as my
second self, you tell me, embracing you long and
tenderly with sincere affection in the presence of the
Pope himself, and under the eyes of the Cardinals,
and after loving kisses and pleasant conversation,
with anxious inquiries about my welfare, he begged
that 1 would send him presently my book On the
Solitary Life, which I wrote years ago in his own
country district, when he was Bishop of the diocese
of Cavaillon, and dedicated to him. In truth he
asks what is only fair, since 1 have really finished
that little treatise ; but I call God, who knows

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THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 257

everything, to witness that ten times at least I have
tried and tried again to send him the writing in
such a state thai, however much its composition
might fail to satisfy the reader's ears and intel-
ligence, at least its penmanship should be pleasing
to his eye. But every attempt to carry out my
wish has been frustrated by the obstacle of which I
am always complaining. You know just what value
to set on a copyist's trustworthiness and diligence ;
they are not the least of the plagues which afHict
your talented writer. And so, incredible as it
sounds, this book which was written in a few months
has never got copied in all these years." The
treatise was actually copied soon after, and sent to
Philip in 1366,

The same letter, like many others which precede
and follow it, contains a reference to the Greek
Leonzio Pilato and the Latin translation of Homer
which Petrarch had commissioned him to make.
The story of Leonzio is a veritable tragi-comedy.
He was born in Calabria, but when in Italy passed
himself off as a native of Thessalonica ; in Greece
it pleased him to boast of his Italian origin. Boc-
caccio had picked him up on the journey from
Venice to Avignon, and persuaded him to come
back with him and teach Greek in Florence.
Leonzio claimed to be a disciple of Barlaam, but
not much reliance could be placed on any account
that he gave of himself. Doubt has even been
thrown on his qualifications as a teacher of Greek,
but Boccaccio certainly regarded him as thoroughly
proficient in the language and conversant with its

258 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

literature. By his influence in Florence, he man-
aged to get a chair of Greek founded specially that
Leonzio might fill it, and, poor as he was, took
private lessons from him, and so supplemented his
professional income. Petrarch too took a share in
contributing to Leonzio's maintenance ; he had
heard with enthusiasm of Boccaccio's scheme for
establishing a chair of Greek, and eagerly seized
the opportunity of commissioning the new professor
to make a Latin translation of Homer. Hitherto
there had been nothing of the kind ; to persons
ignorant of Greek, Homer could be known only
through a sort of compendium, so badly compiled
that its faultiness was apparent on the face of it,
even to students wholly ignorant of the original.
Now, thought Petrarch and Boccaccio, was the op-
portunity for getting a really good translation, and
Petrarch gladly undertook to bear the whole ex-
pense, if he might have the pleasure of putting the
book on the shelves of his library. After many
delays and repeated anxious inquiries, the precious
volumes at length arrived, and were installed
in their place of honour in February, 1366; but
before the translation reached its purchaser, the
translator had come by a strange end ; it seemed as
if the fates had ordained him a death to match the
extravagant oddities of his life. Whatever his
merits as a professor, Leonzio could not be pro-
nounced a social success. In appearance he was a
grotesque little man with preternaturaily hideous
features, coarse rusty-black hair, and a beard of
enormous length. His habits were not nice; and

THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 259

Petrarch says that he wrote letters longer and
dirtier than his beard. In character he could only
be compared to the troll in the fairy story, whose
caprice showed itself in perpetual discontent with
the conditions of his existence, and grumblings at
the people who were kind to him. While he was in
Italy, Greece was the only land for decent folk to
live in. No sooner had he disregarded Petrarch's
and Boccaccio's advice, and betaken himself to
Greece, than he was begging them to have him
back in Italy. Petrarch at least had had enough
of him, and left the letters unanswered; but Leonzio,
who must have been a pretty shrewd judge of
character, felt sure that he would not be turned
away if he presented himself as a suppliant in the
house which for three months had endured him as a
guest. He set sail from Constantinople with a
manuscript of Sophocles, or so he said, as a peace-
offering, and got safely as far as the Adriatic, when
a terrific storm arose, and Leonzio was killed by a
flash of lightning, which struck the mast to which
he was clinging for safely. So died the first pro-
fessor of Greek in a Western University.

From the same series of letters we find that
Boccaccio was once more anxious about his friend's
independence. He did not quite like Petrarch's
long rhapsody on the beauties and amenities of
Pavia; Galeazzo's new palace might be as fine as
Petrarch painted it, but Boccaccio could not be
persuaded that a Visconti castle was the home of
liberty. Petrarch wrote at some length to reassure
him, and this time with better reason than thirteen

a6o PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

years earlier. In 1353 he had been nominally the
free guest of the Visconti, but it cannot be denied
that effectively he was their client; now, in 1366,
though the court phraseology might still designate
them his patrons, he was really the independent
friend of Galeazzo.

In these years we find him increasingly intimate
with men of a younger generation, who were at
once his pupils in literature and the friends of his
old age. Nearest of them all in affection, and
most devoted in service to the master, was Lom-
bardo della Sete, or da Serico, a native of Padua,
and a frequent inmate of the household. He was
a bachelor, and lived a very simple, frugal life in the
country. Petrarch mentions in his will that Lom-
bardo had often neglected his own affairs to attend
to those of his friend ; he named him among his
principal legatees, and even made him his general
heir, in the event of Francesco da Brossano dying
before him. The tie between the two was all the
closer as Lombardo was himself a man of letters
and a diligent student ; he continued and finished
the Epitome of the Lives of Illustrioits Men, on
which Petrarch was engaged at the time of his
death, and there are extant two or three treatises of
his own, one of them evidently suggested by his
studies with Petrarch, On the Praises of certain
Ladies who have won renown in Letters or in Arms.
Another friend and disciple, nearer perhaps to
Petrarch in age, but still a good many years his
junior, was the grammarian Donato degli Albanzani,
a native of Pratovecchio, in the Casentino or upper

I

THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 261

valley of the Arno, and therefore called by Petrarch
Apenninigena. Boccaccio speaks of Donato as a
poor man, but highly respected, and a great friend
of his own. For many years he taught grammar at
Venice, where he probably made Petrarch's ac-
quaintance in or about the year 1361. A firm friend-
ship resulted ; Donato was an enthusiastic admirer
of Petrarch's works, and after the latter's death
published a commentary on his Eclogues and a
translation of his Lives of Illustrious Men. He
also translated Boccaccio's Lives of lllusirious
Women.

A very eminent pupil and follower of Petrarch
in literature, though perhaps not personally known
to him, was Coluccio Salutati, a Florentine by
birth, who while still a boy accompanied his father
into exile at Bologna, and was educated there. A
lawyer by profession, he was in 1368 associated
with Bruno as joint papal secretary, and some years
later he was recalled to Florence and appointed
Chancellor of the Republic. Distinguished as was
his official career, he won far higher fame as a
scholar and a Humanist. Diligently following the
lines laid down by Petrarch and Boccaccio, he did
his utmost for the emendation of corrupt classical
texts, and made the fruitful suggestion that public
libraries should be instituted and trustworthy
copyists placed on their staff. He was himself the
best Latinist of his day, and his voluminous original
works in prose and verse were accounted master-
pieces. He was also well versed in Greek, and
successful in promoting the study of it.

I

262 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Of almost equal celebrity with Coluccio was the
grammarian Giovanni da Ravenna, whom the
former recommended to the lord of that city,
Carlo Malatesta, in 1404, as "having been at one
time the housemate and pupil of Francesco Petrarca,
of famous memory, with whom he lived for the
space of nearly fifteen years." There is an intricate
controversy as to Giovanni's family and the exact
details of his life, but it seems reasonable to con-
clude with Baldelli that he was the staunch friend
of the Carrara family, who was successively a teacher
of grammar at Belluno, at Udine, and perhaps in
Venice, Chancellor of the city of Padua, and
lecturer on Dante as well as on classical literature
at Florence. On the other hand, Fracassetti is
probably correct in discrediting the usual identifica-
tion of him with the unnamed "young man of
Ravenna" who was Petrarch's pupil and private
secretary at this time. There is no sufficient reason
for supposing that this young man's name was
Giovanni, and even if it were, the possession of
so common a Christian name would not establish
his identity with the famous grammarian. On the
other hand, it is practically certain that, whereas
the grammarian spent nearly fifteen years of his
youth in Petrarch's house, the private secretary was
not its inmate for more than three or four.

He came to him on Donates recommendation in
1364, a mere lad, but so apt for his work, that some
two years later Petrarch wrote to Boccaccio that he
had found a treasure. The boy had a prodigious
memory. In eleven days he had all Petrarch's

£:

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THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 263

twelve eclogues perfectly by heart, and he never
forgot what he had learnt. He was temperate in his
habits, not greedy of money, and as keen to work
as his master himself; in a word, though not above
eighteen or nineteen years old, he was already the
ideal pupil and private secretary. He was treated
as a son of the house, and for some three years
he repaid Petrarch's affectionate kindness with fault-
less diligence. His seems to have been the hand
which made the final arrangement of the Familiar
Letters, and to him was entrusted such work as
required scrupulous care and nice judgment in
scholarship.

Petrarch had found what he had been looking for
all these years, a careful and trustworthy copyist.
But the pleasant relation was too good to last One
fine day in 1367 the lad took it into his head that
he would like to see the world. Petrarch was much
more hurt in his affection than solicitous about the
loss to his convenience. He loved the boy, de-
lighted in his companionship, anticipated a dis-
tinguished career for him in literature, and had
believed him to be singularly stable in character ;
now he thought him a little wanting in gratitude
and sadly deficient in steadfastness. Doubtless he
did not make enough allowance for a young man's
natural wish to try his fortune in the great world ;
on the other hand, the lad evidently urged his point
somewhat unkindly and without regard for the
susceptibilities of the employer who had also been
his friend and benefactor. He had his way, of
course. He was for going to Naples to see Virgil's

264 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

tomb, to Calabria, or perhaps to Constantinople^
to learn Greek. At another time he proposed to
visit Avignon. Whatever his ultimate intention,
he actually crossed the Apennines and got to Pisa.
Finding no ship there, and having nearly exhausted
his money, he recrossed the Apennines and made
for Parma, where he was nearly drowned in trying
to ford the river. A passer-by caught him by the
heel and fished him out, and somehow or other
he made his way, penniless, ragged, and half starved,
to Petrarch's house in Pavia. Here he found
Francesco da Brossano at home, who persuaded
him, in spite of shame and fear, to wait and see the
master. To him he confessed his fault, and, of
course, Petrarch took him back. " 1 am sure he
will not stay with me," he wrote to Donato ; "he
will be off again when the impression of his suffer-
ing has worn off, but meanwhile I am putting by a
litde journey-money for him." His prognostication
came true. A year later the young man left him
again, this time with Petrarch's full consent. He
carried with him a letter of introduction to Bruno,
who seems to have employed him as a scribe in the
secretary's office.

Happy as Petrarch was in seeing his work taken
up by capable and eager pupils, and in the general
recognition of its value throughout Europe, it is not
to be supposed that the New Learning was accepted
at once and without question by all the minds
trained in other schools of thought. We have seen
that Petrarch had involved himself in a rather un-
dignified quarrel with the physicians ; he was now

iirkr ^^

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THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 265

to have thn

.-iih that

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I

I

rust on him a similar conflict witi
sect of philosophers who claimed to base their
system on the works of Aristotle, but who knew
their supposed master only through the com-
mentaries of the Arab Averroes, which Michael
Scott had translated into Latin. Nothing could be
more repugnant to Petrarch's mind and conscience
than the method of this school, which was at once
narrow in its formalism and materialistic in its
tendency. Certainly Petrarch professed himself a ,
devotee of philosophy, but the word philosopher
has many shades of meaning. Petrarch took it in |
its literal and general sense of a man who loves
wisdom ; he did not conceive that in order to claim
the title you must have thought out a coherent
scheme of the universe. He was content to take
such philosophical doctrines as pleased him from
any writer in whose pages he found them, and never
dreamed of co-ordinating them into a dogmatic
system. In a word, his philosophy was that of
a man of letters, not of a metaphysician ; and as a
man of letters, anxious that fine thought should be
expressed in fine style, he hated the uncouth forma-
lism of the Averroists, while as a devout Christian
he held the tendency of the school towards
materialism to be a still viler abomination. It was
of the Averroists that he was probably thinking
when he so frequently deplored the ignorance, and
worse than ignorance, prevalent at the universities.
On the other hand, the Averroists were not the
people to take their correction mildly. They were
the dominant school, and who was this writer of

266 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

verses that he should set himself up as a judge
of thinkers ? Of literature and of history they were
perfectly ignorant and scornfully contemptuous.
The jargon of their scheme was the only langnj^e
they regarded, and what could not be expressed lo
its formula;, simply was not knowledge. Matters
came to a head in 1366, when four graceless young
men published in Venice a mock-solemn judgment
to the effect that Franciscus Petrarca was a good
man, but uneducated. It is a sad pity that Petrarch
took up so silly a challenge. Surely he, whom every
scholar in Europe acknowledged for his chief and
master, might have ignored the offensiveness of the
young men's action and laughed at its folly ; but he
was wounded to the quick both in his self-esteem
and in his zeal for the honour of his calling. He
answered the attack in the treatise, the writing
of which occupied him for the ne.xt two years, Oh
his own and many other people's ignorance : a work
which contains some fine passages, and some
thoughts entirely worthy of its title, but is deformed
by that intemperate vehemence and that note of
personal rancour which disfigure all Petrarch's con-
troversial writings.

To help him in the controversy, he tried, appar-
ently without result, to enlist the pen of a dis-
tinguished young friend. The Augustinian friar
Luigi Marsili was a native of Florence, and either
there or at Padua, where he received part of his
education, he was presented while still a mere boy
to Petrarch. The poet, struck by the lad's manner
and address, conceived great hopes of his future ;

_J

THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 267

he welcomed his visits, and became more and more
firmly convinced that a distinguished career was in
store for him. Keen must have been the stimulus
afforded by such encouragement to a boy of brilliant
talents and eager desire for knowledge. Marsili's
subsequent career justified the high hopes which
Petrarch entertained of him ; alike in Paris and in
Italy he was reputed one of the foremost scholars
of his day, and Coluccio Salutati more than once
paid him the compliment of consulting his judgment.
Some years passed between Petrarch's first intimacy
with him and its renewal about this period ; Marsili
was now a young man of whom Petrarch could say
that he had come back to him, in Ovid's words,
"a youth to manhood grown, more comely than
himself." He conceived so strong an affection for
him that in 1373 he gave him the copy of St.
Augustine's Confessions which he himself had re-
ceived from Fra Dionigi forty years earlier, and
accompanied it with a short letter, which, though
written in the last year of his life, may be quoted
here : —

" By your leave, my friend, I should say that my
services to you, which you cite as many, are nothing
at all ; it is merely that I have loved you from your
boyhood, for even then 1 had some presage of what
was coming, and that now 1 love you better and
better every day, now that I have a present hope
of finding in you such a man as 1 wish. Gladly do
I give you the book for which you ask; and I
would give it yet more gladly if it were still in the
condition in which I had it as a gift in my youth

268 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

from the celebrated Dionysius, an eminent brother
of your Order, a man distinguished in learning and
every kind of merit, who was a most kind father to
me. But I was in those days, by disposition perhaps
as well as by my age, Inclined to travel ; and
because this book was very pleasant to me both for
its matter and its author's sake, and was also little
enough to be easily handled and lightly carried
about, I took it with me continually wellnigh aS
through Italy and Germany, so that the book and
my hand seemed to be almost of a piece, so in-
separable had they become by constant companion-
ship. And, to say nothing of other falls by river
and land, I will tell you of a wonderful adventure
when it went down to the bottom of the sea with
me off the coast of Nice, and undoubtedly it had
been all over with us both had not Christ plucked
us out of this imminent danger. So in going hither
and thither with me it has grown old, till its old
pages have become hard reading for old eyes ; and
now at last it takes its way back to the house
of Augustine, whence it came forth, and will soon
be starting afresh on its travels with you, I suppose.
Be it your good pleasure then to take it such as it
is, and henceforth treat anything that I have as at
your disposal ; save yourself the trouble of un-
necessary explanations, and take without asking
whatever pleases you. Farewell, and may good
fortune be with you ; and pray to Christ for me
whenever you approach His table."

A pleasant Incident occurred near the end of the
year 1366. In November Stefano Colonna, a great-

THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS 269

grandson of old Stefano, visited Petrarch at Venice
and spent an afternoon with him. The old wound
was healed then, the old dissensions forgotten, and
Petrarch could now write to Bruno of young Stefano
and young Agapito in terms that recall the warmth
of his old affection for their fathers and uncles.

CHAPTER XVII

THE POPE IN ROME

GREAT news came in the spring of 1367, news
that filled Petrarch with joyful hope of yet
seeing the dawn of that better era for which he had
all his life been looking in vain — the Pope was really
leaving Avignon and going back to Rome. It was
not the full realisation of Petrarch's ideal, but at
least it put an end to what he regarded as the very
worst political evil of the day, the exile of the
Papacy. Rienzi had failed and Charles IV had
never tried to restore the sovereignty of Rome ; but
at least her "second husband" was now awake to
the solemn duties and glorious privileges of his
office ; at least the Eternal City was once more to
be the centre of the world's spiritual life. If so
much could be achieved at a blow, might not all the
rest follow in due course ? Might not the recogni-
tion of Rome's right to be the seat of Papacy lead
men to acknowledge her equally valid right to be
the seat of Empire ? It was even rumoured that the
spiritual and temporal sovereigns of the world had
arranged to meet within her walls ; might not this
meeting be the prelude to their permanent joint
residence there ?

THE POPE IN ROME

271

The virulence of Petrarch's attacks 011 the vices
of the Church and her clergy, and on her establish-
ment at Avignon, which he regarded as the root of
the whole mischief, has led some historians to regard
him as a foe to the Papacy itself. Exultant Protes-
tants have even claimed him as a forerunner of the
Reformation. This is to turn history upside down,
and to interpret the fourteenth century by the
experience of the sixteenth. The idea of spiritual
freedom to be attained and spiritual truth to be
upheld outside the Roman organisation never
occurred to him ; If by an intellectual miracle he
could have conceived Luther's great deliverance, he
would have shrunk from it with abhorrence ; it
would have seemed to him to be vitiated at its very
origin by the double taint of ecclesiastical schism
and disloyalty to Rome. But if he was a loyal son
of the Roman Church, how, it may be asked, could
he possibly attack her clergy and her organisation
as he did ? There is no minimising the force and
bitterness of these attacks ; he himself regarded the
letters containing some of them as so dangerous
that he never acknowledged their authorship, in-
scribed them with no recipient's name, and kept
them strictly secret from all but a few carefully
chosen friends. Nor is this alt ; outside the pages
of the letters Sine Titulo, in his acknowledged
works and even in his Italian poems, there are
denunciations of " Babylon " so fierce that they were
struck out from all editions printed under the juris-
diction of the Curia. Yet the writer of them was
really a papal idealist, intent on serving the Church

272 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

by purifying her, and quite incapable of the idea
of quitting her. In penning these furious dia-
tribes, he undoubtedly regarded himself as a
surgeon using the sharpest possible instrument to
cut out a cancerous growth which threatened the
patient's very life. Nor did he stand alone ;
Catholics of unimpeachable loyalty shared his
views ; very eminent Churchmen protected and
encouraged him ; bishops and even cardinals were
among the chosen few to whom the letters Sim
Tilulo were shown.

At last, it seemed, the Pope himself was con-
vinced, and Petrarch might not unreasonably claim
to have had a share in the work of convincing him.
Urban was the third Pope to whom he had ad-
dressed his impassioned appeal for justice to Rome.
To Benedict XII he had written a couple of
poetical Latin letters; to Clement VI he had ad-
dressed a rhetorical poem which Rossetti believes
to have been spoken as a harangue on the occasion
of Rienzi's embassy: now in 1366, while Urban
still seemed established at Avignon, he sent him a
long prose letter — rather, perhaps, we may call it
a treatise and an exhortation — which is one of the
most interesting of his political writings. The form
of these appeals to successive Popes varies, but
their tenor is always the same : the sorrowful
" widowhood " of Rome, the pity of it, the shame
of it, and the glory awaiting the servant of God
who shall right her wrong—such is the theme of
them all ; and not of them only, for the letters to
Rienzi and to Charles IV bewail the same misery,

il

t

THE POPE IN ROME

273

urge the same duty, glow with the same fervour,
extol the same ideal.

To the Pope, as to the Emperor, Petrarch writes
with an uncompromising freedom of speech which
shows that his high-flown compliments are the
language of conventional courtesy, not of adula-
tion. A long preface explains why the writer had
allowed more than three years to elapse since
Urban's election before addressing him; he had
delayed not from distrust of his powers, for the
zeal of his heart might well compensate for their
deficiency, nor yet from fear of the Pope's dis-
pleasure, against which his own age and Urban's
goodness gave him double protection ; but partly
from unwillingness to incur suspicion of flattery by
praising one so highly placed, and partly from fear
that if he praised the good work that Urban had
already done, he might repeat with the Pope his
lamentable experience with the Emperor ; the later
event might belie the early promise, and he might
have vehemently to blame one whom he had pre-
maturely praised For often those who show bril-
liant promise in lesser things fail in the supreme
business of their life ; and of all life's businesses
those of Pope and Emperor are the supreme ones.

Now he breaks silence, for three years and more
have passed without sign of the accomplishment of
the great work. All this while he had never lost
hope, knowing and saying to others more im-
patient than himself that great enterprises cannot
be done in a hurry. But now time enough for
reasonable preparation has gone by ; he must ask

274 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

a patient hearing for exhortation, perhaps even for
blame.

Let Urban consider, while he does lesser things
consummately well at Avignon, in what state lies hb
natural home, his spiritual bride. True, the whole
Church is his, and the city in which he chooses to
dwell may be called his bride ; none the less Rome
has a peculiar claim on him ; all other cities have
their special bridegrooms ; she alone has no bishop
but the Pope. He bids all other bishops reside
in their sees ; how then can he leave the queen
of cities in ruins, spoiled by robbers, and desolate
of her bridegroom ? Surely his very name, volun-
tarily assumed and hailed as an omen of hope, is a
call that Urban cannot ignore. His noble mind
may despise world-given glory ; but let him think
what merit Christ will impute to him who brings His
Church back to the place where He established her.
Of all six Popes who have sat at Avignon, Urban
has received the clearest call to the great work ;
for in his election the finger of God was almost
miraculously made manifest. If the return to Rome
is God's will, He will perform it through some one ;
why should Urban leave to a successor the glory of
being His instrument.'*

Four qualities are requisite in the man who shall
do the great work ; Urban possesses them all. He
has intellectual ability, for lack of which some have
been unable to discern the good cause from the
bad. He has goodness of heart and will ; many
have let their passions overpower the conviction of
their minds. He has experience ; for lack of it

THE POPE IN ROME

275

»

many have maintained the superiority of Provence
over Italy. Lastly, he is disinterested; many oppose
the return to Rome out of regard for their worldly
interests in Avignon. In a word, Pope Urban is
marked out as the man to return to the Urbs.

Lately he had a magnificent reception at Mar-
seilles ; that was but a feeble earnest of what would
await him in Rome. And who can say that Avig-
non is a safe residence and Rome a dangerous one ?
Safe ! Why the Great Company lately held city
and Pope to ransom ; Urban suffered worse indig-
nities than Boniface ; and if Rome is turbulent, the
Pope's absence is the main cause of her turbulence.
Never can he be as happy at Avignon as in Rome,
for only in Rome can he feel that he is taking his
proper place and doing his duty to God and man.

Lastly, nowhere west of Rome can Pope and
Emperor honourably and fittingly meet the peril
from the Turks. How, if he stays at Avignon,
will he answer Christ and Peter in the fast-ap-
proaching day of death and judgment?

A summary can give at best but a poor reflection
of Petrarch's argument ; the actual letter occupies
eighteen folio pages, and from every page breathes
the persuasiveness of earnest conviction. But could
its author hope to succeed at this third attempt?
The obstacles might well seem as formidable as
ever. Once again the Pope was a Frenchman, and
the French party had a stronger hold than ever on
the Sacred College. Only the Pope's personality
was changed, but this was a change indeed. Bene-
dict, it is true, was not exactly the "ass" that he

276 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

styled himself in the first surprise of his electioi^
but his intellect was of the narrowest theological
type, he was dull of imagination, impermeable by
ideas. Clement had the wit to understand and
the taste to value a fine conception, but lacked the
driving power of moral purpose. Of Urban, on the
contrary, Petrarch could say without flattery that
he seemed to combine in himself all the requisite
qualities : a great policy was congenial to his mind,
unselfish devotion to duty was perhaps the keynote
of his character, and he had already given proof of
no litde sagacity in carrying out reforms. At last,
then, Petrarch might hope for success, and the
course of events soon justified his hopefulness.
How far his appeal actually influenced the Pope
cannot be determined, but considering his great
reputation and the high esteem in which his letters
were held, it is reasonable to suppose that his
advocacy had weight with Urban, if not in forming
his decision, at least in confirming it and in hasten-
ing its execution. His letter is dated June 29th;
the year is demonstrably 1366 ; and before the end
of that year the Papal Legate was busy getting ready
a summer residence for the Pope at Viterbo, restor-
ing the ruined palaces of Rome, and even arranging
with Venice, Genoa, and Naples for a supply of
galleys to bring the Papal Court by sea from the
Rhone to the Tiber.

On April 30th, 1367. the Pope left Avignon, on
June gth he reached Viterbo, and about the end
of the month went on to Rome. The Babylonish
captivity was apparently at an end, and Petrarch

t

THE POPE IN ROME

277

I

poured out his soul in a long congratulatory letter
to the Pope. But even in this pa;an of praise and
thanksgiving there is a characteristic note of warn-
ing and of exhortation to persevere. Petrarch was
an enthusiast with a keen eye for actualities ; he
knew that the French party would spare no effort
to bring about a return to Avignon, and almost in
the same breath with his exultant cry that Israel
was come out of Egypt and the House of Jacob
from among a strange people, he exhorts the Pope
to endurance in well-doing, to patience in over-
coming difficulties, and to vigilance against the arts
of the malcontents. Two dangers cause him special
uneasiness. One is the self-indulgent epicurism of
the Court. This base motive he combats in a vein
of scornful persiflage, which overlies but does not
conceal his deep anxiety. These people judge a
country by the quality not of its sons but of its tuns;
they prefer the wine they get in Provence to the
vintages of Italy. But was ever a man so desperate
a drunkard as to want to sleep in his vineyard ?
Wine is grown in the vineyard, kept in the cellar,
drunk in the hall ; the two first are the steward's
business, only the third is the master's. Wherever
you live, your wine must be brought to the house,
and if these people must needs drink French wine
in Italy, well, a little extra toil of sailors who will
enjoy the job will bring it them, and it will have
improved on the voyage. And so forth. The
other chief danger is the argument from Italian
turbulence. Already a street riot at Viterbo had
served the French party only too well as an instance

278 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

of mob-violence, and Petrarch foresaw that they
would magnify such petty incidents, and possibly
even provoke them, in the hope of frightening
Urban back to their own country.

It is curious that, except for a brief acknowledg-
ment of the importance of the Gallican Church, he
hardly notices the one serious argument by which a
statesman might have defended a preference for
Avignon. The centre of European gravity had
shifted northwards. France, Germany, and, above
all, England were daily growing more important ;
and it was at least arguable that Southern France
could now provide a more convenient ecclesiastical
capital than central Italy. Petrarch's silence on
this point was certainly not due to lack of counter-
arguments ; it is fairly safe to infer from it that
motives of self-interest, not those of public policy,
were the really formidable influences at work.

Urban look all this exhortation in the spirit in
which it was given, and sent his monitor more than
one cordial invitation to pay him a visit. Nothing
could have been more gratifying to Petrarch, but
for the moment he seems to have been unable to
accept ; probably the state of his health made it
difficult for him to undertake so long a journey.

During the years 1367-8 he divided his time as
usual between Venice, Padua, and Pavia. In the
latter year his visit to Galeazzo was paid earlier in
the season than usual ; the interminable quarrel
between the Visconti and the Church had entered
a new phase, and Galeazzo, for the moment anxious
for peace, sent for Petrarch to help him in treating

THE POPE IN ROME

279

for it- Petrarch accordingly left Padua on May 25th,
and arrived at Pavia on the 29th. The Pope was
represented by his brother, Cardinal Grimoard,
whom he had lately placed as Legate in Bologna,
and Petrarch was evidently welcomed as the friend
of both parties to the dispute. But the negotiations
came to nothing, and the war went on. From
Pavia, according to the received story, of which
however there is no confirmation in Petrarch's own
writings, he went on to Milan to be present at a
ceremony of no little interest to Englishmen,
Galeazzo, eager for royal alliances, was not con-
tent with having married his son to a princess of
France ; he was now about to marry his daughter
to a prince of England. Lionel "of Antwerp,"
Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III, had
been four years a widower ; and for half that time
negotiations had been going on for his marriage
with Galeazzo's daughter Violante. At last the
treaty had been signed at Windsor. The bride-
groom contributed royal blood, a handsome person,
and the theoretical ownership, derived from his first
wife, of large estates in Ireland The bride brought
two hundred thousand golden florins and the effec-
tive lordship of several townships in Piedmont.
After brilliant festivities in France and Savoy, the
Duke of Clarence reached Milan, and one day
early in June — there is the usual conflict of evidence
as to the exact date — the marriage was solemnised
with the utmost splendour in the church of Santa
Maria Maggiore. The received tradition says that
at the banquet which followed, Petrarch sat at the

28o PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

high table among the most illustrious guests,
Duke lived but a short time to enjoy his bride and
her wealth ; less than five months after his marriage
he died of fever in Piedmont. There was the
usual talk of poison, but Galeazzo had much to
lose and nothing to gain by his son-in-law's death,
and an Englishman's imprudence in a strange
climate furnishes a sufficient and probable ex-
planation.

In July Petrarch resolved to return to Padua.
But Lombardy had once again become a vast
camp, divided between the rival armies of the
Visconti and the league organised against them by
the Pope. Travel might well seem impossible, but
Petrarch would not be deterred from the attempt.
He chartered a boat, coaxed a half- frightened
company of boatmen to work her, took not a
weapon to defend himself with, and sailed quietly
down the Po. The adventure had an astonishing
success. Through the river-fleets and between the
massed squadrons of both armies sailed this invalid
old man of a perfect courage, and the officers of
both hosts vied with each other in doing him
honour. His voyage was a triumphal progress,
delayed not by the hostility but by the assiduous
kindness of all whom he met. Hardly ever in the
world's history has the soldier rendered such homage
to the poeL

Even this peaceful triumph scarcely gave
adequate compensation for the loss of a visit from
Boccaccio. The latter had left Florence towards
the end of March, meaning to go straight through

THE POPE IN ROME 281

Venice and enjoy with Petrarch the mutual
jdelight of a surprise visit. Bad weather and perils
■by the wayside delayed his journey, and he was still
detained at Bologna when he heard that Petrarch
lad left Venice on his unseasonable journey to
IPavia. How keen was the disappointment may be
■read in Boccaccio's charming letter of regret. " I
llmost gave up the project," he writes ; " indeed
here was excellent reason for stopping short. For
however many things worth seeing there may be in
Venice, none of all these would have induced me to
start ; and it was only the wish to keep faith with
certain friends, and to see those two whom you love
best, your TulHa and her Francesco (whom till then
I had not known, though I think I know all your
other intimates), that persuaded me to resume
the journey and accomplish it at the cost of im-
mense fatigue." And, after warmest praises of
Francesca and her husband, he delightfully adds :
" But what that belongs to you, or is of your making,
can I refrain from praising?"

Sorrow once more dealt heavily with Petrarch in
this year, which took from him both the youngest
and the oldest of those whom he loved, his baby
grandson and Guido Settimo, Archbishop of Genoa.
Guido had been his playmate in childhood, his
constant companion in youth, his welcome guest at
Vaucluse, where he found occasional relaxation from
the strain of a busy life, his friend always.

The end of the year was marked by a happier
event Philip de Cabassoles, who for the last seven
years had borne the honorific but empty title of

282 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Patriarch of Jerusalem, was raised to the Cardinal-
ate, and to this dignity was added in the following
year the Bishopric of Sabina. The immediate
cause of Philip's elevation was his conduct of a
special mission to administer the ecclesiastical affairs
of Marseilles ; but apart from his success in this
particular work, his appointment was an instance
of Urban's determination to regard character and
ability as the qualihcations for high ofHce in the
Church.

The year [369 is notable in Petrarch's life, chiefly
as the dale of his first stay at Arqui, a village
in the Euganean hills, which thereafter becEune his
regular summer residence, and will be more fully
described in the next chapter. In the same year he
availed himself of his favour with the Pope to
espouse the cause of Thomas of Fn'gnano, General
of the Franciscans. The Chapter of the Order
had elected Thomas against the wish of their
patron, the Cardinal of Limoges ; other members of
the Order shared the Cardinal's dislike of the new
General, and accused him of heresy. The scandal
was so grave that Urban suspended Thomas from
his functions, and summoned him to defend himself
in Rome. Petrarch, who was convinced of the
General's innocence and held his character In high
esteem, wrote an eloquent defence of him to the
Pope, which may well have inHuenced Urban in
forming his decision. This was, at all events, in
Thomas's favour ; he was completely acquitted and
reinstated in his office, and his subsequent career
amply justified Petrarch's opinion of him. He was

THE POPE IN ROME

=83

x3e Patriarch of Grado by Gregory XI, and

ardinal by Urban VI.

, Towards the end of the year came another press-

■g invitation from Urban to visit Rome. In reply

retrarch wrote, on Christmas Eve, deploring his

lability to travel at that season, but promising

Bobey the Pope's summons without fail in the fol-
lowing spring. In April, accordingly, he made his

rill and set out from Padua ; but on reaching
rerrara, barely fifty miles away, he was seized with
"a fainting fit which was reported to be fatal, and
very nearly proved so. After all, it was perhaps as
well that he was stopped on the journey : his dis-
appointment, had he arrived in Rome, might have
been even keener than his disappointment at being
baulked of his visit. He would have found the
Pope distraught with manifold anxieties, hampered
by the incessant intrigues of his courtiers, doubting
if he had done right in coming to Rome, and more
than half inclined to go back to Avignon. Highly
as he esteemed Petrarch's zeal for great principles,
and much as he admired his eloquence in defending
them, it is not to be supposed that the poet's exhor-
tations could have outweighed the pressure of un-
toward circumstances. Since Urban had been in
Rome, troubles had multiplied round him. True,
he had escaped the humiliating state of dependence
which had threatened to make the Papacy a depart-
ment of the Government of France. The verdict
of history holds, with Petrarch and with Saint
Catherine, that this great deliverance was worth all
the sacrifices necessary to achieve it. But Urban

284 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

might be pardoned if he thought that it been bought
too dear. Vexation and disappointment had been
his portion in Rome. The Emperor had visited
him in 1368; but the courtesies in which Charles
abounded were poor compensation for the deadly
mischief that he caused to the peace of Tuscany.
Lombardy was ablaze with war. The Pope's
enemies defied him, his friends fought more for
their own hands than for Holy Church. All the
time the pressure of the French party never
slackened. Five of the Cardinals had flatly re-
fused to leave Avignon ; their compatriots, wiser in
their generation, accompanied Urban to Italy and
gave him no peace while he stayed there. The
Pope was a disillusioned man, and in the bitterness
of disillusionment he yielded. He took the Curia
back to Avignon in September, and died there
in December.

Petrarch's last political hope was shattered:
Tribunate, Empire, Papacy, each had failed ; Rome
was once more a "widow." But his disappoint-
ment, bitter as it was, did not poison his mind
against Urban ; he heard of his death with sincere
sorrow, and in spite of ill-health, which might well
have been accounted a valid excuse, he testified his
veneration for the Pope's saintly character by at-
tending his funeral at Bologna.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LAST YEARS

THE record of an invalid's last years must have
a certain sadness, but it would be a great
mistake to represent the end of Petrarch's life as a
period of gloom. On the contrary, we have to
chronicle a triumph of character over circumstance.
Events were untoward ; but events, after all, are
only the raw material of Hfe ; it is a man's way of
dealing with them that makes or mars the finished
article. Petrarch comes out of this test with a new
hold on our sympathies, a new claim to our admira-
tion. Continual ill-health, the pain of a patriot's
disappointment, disturbance of his chosen home by
turmoil of war, the defeat and humiliation of a
dear friend, here surely were troubles enough to
breed despondency, almost to excuse moroseness.
Petrarch met them all with a serenity that illumines
the dark places and sheds a halo over the whole
retrospect of his life. He had a scholar's tenacity,
a scholar's courage, a scholar's inexhaustible con-
solations.

Once, indeed, in the midst of all this calm con-
fronting of adversity, the old Adam flashed out into
vehemence of invective. But this time it was no
;85

286 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

mere private quarrel that stirred his wrath ; Rome
was attacked in the person of her champion, and it
was in defence of Rome, far more than of himself,
that he once more steeped his pen in gall. A
French Cistercian, angered by his letters of ex-
hortation and congratulation to Pope Urban, had
published a clumsy and silly pamphlet by way of
counterblast. The quality of its wit may be judged
from the opening sentences, which compare Pope
Urban's journey from Avignon to Rome with that
of the man who went down from Jerusalem to
Jericho and fell among thieves. A little later Rome
is elegantly likened to the waning moon. There is
much ill-natured vilification of Petrarch and of
Italy, and much laudation of the superior excellences
of France and Frenchmen. Petrarch could not
leave this poor stuff alone. We have already had
occasion to note that he did not shine in con-
troversy ; the Apology in Answer to a Frenckmani
Calumnies bears a depressing likeness to the rubbish
which it undertakes to confute. It is not such
sheer nonsense ; it is written in decent Latin, and
it has the merit of patriotic motive ; but it is marred
by a note of rancour, and those who love its author
do not willingly read it twice.

Urban's successor was Pierre Roger de Beaufort,
nephew and namesake of Clement VI, who is
famous in history under his papal name of
Gregory XI, as the friend of St Catherine of
Siena, and the Pope who finally brought back the
Curia to Rome. He was a man of great ability
and high character, sincere in his efforts to reform

I

THE LAST YEARS 287

the monastic orders, and equally sincere in combat-
ing the doctrines of Wickliffe. Towards Petrarch
he showed the kindliest goodwill, and soon after
his accession instructed Bruno to write him a letter
expressing friendship, and hinting an intention of
doing something for him. Petrarch's reply is in-
teresting, as showing that his considerable income '
was barely sufficient to meet the many claims upon
it. He cannot say with truth, he tells Bruno, that
his means are insufficient for the maintenance of a '
simple canon, but he can say quite truly that he I
has a wider circle of acquaintance than all the rest
of the Chapter put together, and these friends put
him to charges. Besides an old priest who lives
with him, a whole troop will often turn up at meal-
times ; they swarm like Penelope's suitors, only
they are friends, not enemies, and he has not the
heart to turn them away or grudge them the
victuals. Then, alas ! he cannot do without
servants ; and he keeps a couple of horses,
and usually five or six scribes. Just now he
has only three, because scribes worthy of the
name are not to be found : one only gets mere
mechanical copyists— and bad ones at that. Then
he is undertaking to build a little oratory to the
Virgin. This work he will accomplish if he has to
pawn or sell his books to pay for it So if Gregory
is minded to do for him what Urban had promised,
and he himself hints, the gift will be welcome.
Petrarch can, indeed, manage at a pinch as he has
managed hitherto, but age makes the pinch harder.
Only do not let the Pope expect him to ask for

288 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

anything. Let him do anything or nothing, just as
he sees fit ; in any case, though, let him not confer
a cure of souls or any office entailing fresh labour.
Petrarch had refused secretaryships and bishoprics
from Clement. He cannot, as an old man, take
from the nephew burdens which, as a young man, he
had refused to receive from the uncle. Finally, he
commends the whole matter to the goodness of the
Pope and the kind offices of Bruno and Philip de
Cabassoles. It does not appear that any additional
benefice was conferred, or that Petrarch was very
seriously straitened for want of one; in his persona!
habits he was the most frugal of men, and any
accession of income would probably have been
spent on the further multiplication of manuscripts.
The letter, of which the above is a brief summary,
was written at Whitsuntide, 1371, from Arqua, where
Petrarch had now established his summer residence.
His first recorded stay in the place was, as we have
already seen, in the summer of 1369, when he took
refuge from the turmoil of the city in the hospitable
house of the Augustinian Friars there. He was so
charmed with the beauty of the place, that he got
Lombardo da Serico to negotiate for the purchase
of a plot of ground, comprising a vineyard and an
orchard of olives and other fruit trees. Here he
built a house, which still stands structurally un-
altered, and bears witness to the simplicity of his
domestic habits and his appreciation of beautiful
scenery. Englishmen need no assurance of the
loveliness of the hills which inspired the Muse of
Shelley. Arquk lies in a long narrow valley

»

I

THE LAST YEARS 289

hemmed in by conical peaks and their connecting
ridges ; in the whole neighbourhood there is not a
spot which looks out on a more enchanting land-
scape than the site chosen by Petrarch for his
house. He built it on a little spur jutting out from
a hill-side, which shelters it from the north-east ; to
the west and south are glorious views up and across
the valley; to the south-east the village scrambles,
Italian fashion, up the lower slopes: in Petrarch's
day it was crowned by a castle, of which only some
ruined arches and a fine thirteenth- century tower
now remain. Beyond the village is the only ap-
parent outlet from the valley, a narrow gap in the
hills leading to the flat water-meadows and isolated
crag of Monselice.

All through this period, Petrarch's life hung by a
thread. Four times in one year, he tells Pandolfo
Malatesta, he was threatened with imminent death ;
the first of these occasions must have been the
fainting-fit of Ferrara already mentioned, the last,
as we learn from his own letter, occurred in the
spring of 1371. He had lately come back from
Arqui to spend a few days in Padua, and was just
going to answer Pandolfo's anxious inquiries about
his health by telling him that he was getting the
better of a long sickness. "But all of a sudden," he
writes, "on May 8th, a most violent fit of my familiar
fever seized me. The physicians flocked in, some
sent by order of the lord of the city, others drawn
to the house by friendly concern for me. Up and
down they wrangled and disputed, till at last they
settled that I was to die at midnight : already it was

290 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

the first watch of the night ; see what a tmy span
of life remained to me, if these humbugging fellows'
tales had been true. But every day confirms me
more and more in my old opinion of them. They
said there was one possible expedient for prolonging
my life a little, by tying me up in some arrangement
of strings and so preventing me from going to sleep:
in this way there was just a chance that I might
last till morning — a mighty tiresome price to pay for
I this little extra lime ! As a matter of fact, to rob
i me of my sleep was just the way to kill me. Well,
we disobeyed them, for I have always begged my
friends and ordered my servants never to let any of
these doctors' tricks be tried on my body, but always
to do the exact contrary of what they advise. So
1 passed that night in a sweet, deep sleep, such as
Virgil calls the very image of calm death. Why
make a long story ? I was to die at midnight. In
the morning, flocking, I suppose, to my funeral,
they found me writing, and, utterly astounded, they
could say nothing but that 1 was a wonderful maa
Over and over again they have been baffled and
tricked about me, and yet they never stop impu-
dently asserting what they know nothing about, nor
can they find any other shield than this to cover
their ignorance. Yet if I am a wonderful man, how
much more wonderful are they ! And as for those
who believe in them, they are not merely wonderful,
but astounding."

It must be owned that Petrarch's experience lent
some colour to his quarrel with the doctors. But in
truth his condition was beyond hope of relief from

THE LAST YEARS

291

the science of that day. A year later he had another
painful reminder of his physical weakness. Philip
de Cabassoles had come as Legate into Umbria,
and with affectionate urgency insisted that Petrarch
must come to visit him in Perugia. No possible
summons could have been more agreeable to the
latter, and in May, 1372, he tried to obey it, but
found himself unable to sit on horseback. The
friends never saw each other again, for Philip died
in the following August.

Meanwhile, war had broken out between Padua
and Venice, and Petrarch could no longer enjoy the
use of his house in the latter city. " 1 should be
suspected there," he writes, in January, 1372; "here
(at Padua) I am beloved." During the spring and
summer he seems to have been much at Arqua, but
in the autumn the progress of the war drove him
thence. Things had gone badly for the Paduans,
and the Venetian general camped his army within a
short distance of Arqu^. Residence in the country
was no longer safe, and, sorely against the grain,
Petrarch transferred himself and his family about
the middle of November within the walls of Padua.

The Venetians pursued their success in the follow-
ing year, and Francesco da Carrara, after vainly
soliciting help from the King of Hungary, found
himself obliged to sue for peace and accept what
terms the republic would grant him. Venice was
never slow to set her foot on the neck of an enemy.
She stipulated that the Lord of Padua should
acknowledge himself to be entirely in the wrong,
. and that either in his own person, or in that of his

292 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

son, he should go to Venice to entreat pardon for
the past, and swear allegiance for the future. Fran-
cesco despatched his son on this painful errand, and
begged Petrarch to accompany him as chief spokes-
man. The Venetian Senate gave them audience on
September 2Sth, but Petrarch, seized probably wiih
illness, found himself unable to deliver the speech
which he had prepared ; the audience was postponed
till the following day, when the speech was duly
delivered, and the humiliating ceremony accom-
plished.

There were probably not many men still living
for whom Petrarch would have undertaken such a
task, but he was bound to Francesco by ties of close
and peculiar affection. That prince had inherited
the leading characteristics of his father Jacopo, his
unscrupulousness in politics, his cultured intellect,
and his personal charm ; he inherited also his warm
and sincere regard for Petrarch. Francesco could
not have treated his own father with more solicitous
respect than he paid to his father's friend. Nothing
that could make Petrarch's stay in Padua agreeable
was omitted, and when he fled from the bustle of the
city to the quietude of Arqua, Francesco delighted
to visit him there and engage him in discussions on
the subjects that interested them both. It was to
him that, just about this time, Petrarch wrote the
long letter on the principles of government, which,
in the Bile edition of his works, is printed as a
separate treatise under the title On the best methods
of adtftinisteritig a State. The pamphlet is especi-
ally notable for the stress that it lays on the ethical

THE LAST YEARS

293

basis of government, and on the moral qualities
requisite to make a good ruler. Here we have a
marked contrast between Petrarch and the great
political thinker of the following century. Macchia-
velli takes it for granted that adminstration is a
prince's business, and proceeds to show how he can
get through it most efficiently. Petrarch "is con-
tent to fill a single letter with a subject which might
well form the matter of many books, the question
what sort of man he ought to be to whom the
charge of the State has been committed." The
ruler, in a word, must justify his existence by ruling
well.

It is to this period, too, that we must refer the
writing of his autobiography, which took the form
of a Letter to Posterity. The desire to live in the
thoughts of mankind is not peculiar to any age, but
It was felt perhaps with unwonted intensity by the
men of the Renaissance. The world was in reaction*
against what is commonly called ihe mediaeval spirit.
The monastic system embodied, as it were, the
principle of self-effacement ; and theology, which
was the chief intellectual business of the Middle
Ages, contemplates themes in face of which a mere
man shrinks to nothingness. Against this withering
of the individual, the new learning raised its protest,
and it is characteristic of Petrarch that he could
be at once the fervent devotee and the scholar
athirst for fame. It was not enough for him that
his influence should work as a silent leaven in the
minds of men ; he wanted to be remembered as a
man, as a personality. " You may perhaps have

294 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

heard some report of me," he writes to the imagin-
ary recipient of the Letter to Posterity, "and you
may like to know what sort of a man I was, and
what was the outcome of my works." The letter is
only a fragment, and carries us no further down than
Jacopo da Carrara's death, when Petrarch was still
under fifty. Nor does it help us as much as we
might have expected in solving the chronological
difficulties which beset the student of its author's
career. But the really significant thing about it is
that the idea of writing it should have entered his
head.

The letters of this period are rich in instances of
the serene calm with which Petrarch awaited death.
"I read, 1 write, 1 think," he says of himself at
the beginning of 1372 ; "this is my life, this is my
delight, just as it has been ever since the days of
my youth. 1 envy no man, I hale no man, and
whereas I wrote long ago that ! looked down on
no man, now I must say that I look down on many,
but most of all on myself" A little more or a little
less of life does not seem to him a thing to make
a fuss about ; he waits God's will, and in the mean-
time keeps flying the flag of his allegiance to Learn-
ing. In a letter to Benvenuto da Imola, he lauds
poetry as the most glorious of the arts, and in a
most noble letter to Boccaccio, written in 1373, a
letter which they who value learning should cherish
as a priceless heritage, he declares that nothing but
death shall tear him from his beloved studies.

Boccaccio had written in serious anxiety about
his beloved master's health, and had advised that.

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295

having done more than enough for reputation, he
should now allow himself a rest from hard work,
" No counsel could be more repugnant to my
mood," says Petrarch with the frank expression of
contrary opinion possible between such friends. . . .
"You write that my ill-health makes you ill at
ease ; I know that, and am not surprised at it.
Neither of us can be really well while the other
is ailing. You add that you suppose the Comic
poet's saying is becoming applicable to me, that
old age is a disease in itself. Here again is no-
thing to wonder at, nor do 1 reject this utterance ;
only 1 should modify it by saying that old age is not
a state of bodily disease but of mental health. Well,
would you have me prefer that these conditions
should be reversed, so that I should carry a sick
mind in a sound body ? Far be such a wish from
my mind! My desire and my delight is that, as
in the body, so in the whole man, that part which
is the nobler should be healthy above the rest.
You instance me my years, and this you could not
have done if I myself had not told you the tale of
them . . . but believe me, I remember them, and
every day I say to myself, ' Here is one more step
towards the end.' ... I remember them, and do
not blush to acknowledge my age ; why should I
be more ashamed of having grown old than of
having lived, when the one process cannot go on
long without the other? What I should really like
is not to be younger than I am, but to feel that I
had reached old age by a course of more honour-
able deeds and pursuits ; and nothing distresses me

296 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

more than that in all this long while I have not
reached the goal that I ought to have reached.
Therefore I am still striving, if haply now at even-
tide it may be granted me to retrieve the daytime's
sloth, and often do I call to mind the maxim of
that most wise Prince, Augustus Cssar, that ' what-
ever is done well enough is done soon enough ; ' as
also the saying of Plato, the most learned of the
philosophers, that ' Happy is he to whom it is
granted even in old age to attain to wisdom and
right opinion ; ' or again, that Catholic doctrine of
the most holy Father Ambrose, that ' Blessed is
the man who even in old age has risen from error;
yea, blessed is he who even under the very stroke
of death turns away his mind from unrighteous-
ness.' With these and similar thoughts I am
brought to the resolution of amending by God's
favour not only the defects of my life, but those
of my writings too; for neglect of these faults might
in old days have been attributed to set purpose,
but can now be ascribed only to an old man's tor]
and slothfulness.

" And here comes in that advice of yours wh
as I have said and say again, causes me utter
astonishment ; for who can fail to be astonished at
hearing counsels of sleep and laziness from the ,
mouth of the wakefullest of men ? Read again, [
pray you, and examine what you wrote ;
judgment on your own advice, and acquit it if you
dare ; the passage, I mean, where by way of a
medicine for old age you exhort me to sloth, a fai
worse evil than ever age can be ; and the

torpaj^

nrhH
tter

I at .

'4

THE LAST YEARS

297

readily to persuade me, you try to make me out a
great man in one respect or another, as though I
might now come to a stand on the plea that I have
gone far enough in life and achievement and learn-
ing. But I am of quite another mind, as the saying
is, and have come to a very different resolution,
namely, to double my pace, and now at this season
of sunset, as having lost part of the daylight, to
make more haste than ever towards the goal.

"Now why do you give your friend advice which
you do not take yourself? Such is not the wont of
trusty counsellors. But herein you have recourse
to a wonderful piece of wit and craft ; you say that
by my writings I have won reputation far and wide
. . . that I am known to the uttermost ends of
the earth. ... In this your love for me deceives
you ; it is a really absurd exaggeration. . . . But
granted that it were true ; imagine my reputation
spread as widely as you please ... do you think
this would be a rein to my diligence? Nay, it
would be a spur to it ; the more flourishing ap-
peared the results of my labours, the keener would
be my exertions in them ; such is my mood, that
success would make me not slothful but eager and
ardent. Further, as though the bounds of earth
were too narrow, you say that 1 am known also
above the firmament, a form of praise bestowed
on Aeneas and Julius; and there, without any
doubt, I really am known ; and I pray that I may
be beloved there too. Next you say in praise of
me that, throughout Italy, and very likely beyond
■Italy ; too, I have stirred up the wits of many to

298 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

engage in these studies of ours, which
neglected for so many centuries ; and this credit I
do not disclaim, for I am older than nearly all those
who are now working at these subjects in our
country. But your inference I do not admit, that I
should make way for the talents of younger men,
break the swing of the effort in which I have
enjjaged, allow others to have something to write
about if they wish, and not seem to want to do all
the writing myself. Oh, what a difference of view
between us, who have but one will ! To you my
writings seem exhaustive, or at any rate immense;
to me they seem a mere nothing. But granted I
have written a great deal, and shall write a great
deal more ; what better means can I possibly find
of inciting the minds of those who come after us to
perseverance ? Example is always more stimulating
than precept ; Camillus, a much applauded general
in his old age, did much more to kindle the young
men's valour by marching to battle like one of
themselves, than if he had left them in the fighting
line, issued his orders, and gone to bed. As for
your fear of my exhausting all the subjects, so that
nothing will be left for any one else, it is like
Alexander of Macedon's absurd apprehension that
his father Philip would conquer the world and
leave him no chance of winning a soldier's reputa-
tion. . . . But Seneca has rid us of that fear in a
letter to Lucilius. . . .

" Our ancestors worked hard in old age ; . . .
they had no longer span of life than ours, but they
had greater industry ; and life without industry is

THE LAST YEARS

299

not really life, but a sluggish and unprofitable
loitering. . . . Now your crowning resource in
persuasion is an entreaty that I will try to live as
long as I can for the joy of my friends, and above all
for the comfort of your own old age ; for, as you say,
you hope that 1 shall outlive you. Ah me ! this was
what our dear Simonides always hoped ; and again
ah me ! his prayer was only loo fatally efficacious,
whereas if there were any regularity in human
affairs, he ought to have outlived me. And now
you, my brother, utter this affectionate wish more
fervently than any one, and some others among my
friends utter it too ; but it is the exact opposite of
my wish, for I desire to die while you are still alive,
and so to leave behind me some in whose memory
and speech I may live on, and by whose prayers I
may be profited, by whom I may still be loved and

issed. . . ,

" Lastly, you ask me to pardon you for proffering
advice, and venturing to prescribe a mode of life to
me under which 1 should give up mental strain

id vigils and my usual tasks, and should nurse
my age, worn out with years and study, in the lap
of ease and sleep. Nay, it is not pardon but
thanks that I give you, recognising your love for
me, which makes you in my behalf what you never
are in your own, a physician. But bear with me, I
entreat you, in that I obey not your orders, and
believe that even if 1 were most greedy of life,
which 1 am not, still if 1 were to rule me by your
advice, 1 should but die the sooner. Constant toil
and strain are food to my spirit ; when once 1 begin

300 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

to rest and slacken, I shall soon cease to live.
know my own strength ; I am not fit for other
labours ; but this of reading and writing, in which
you bid me slacken, is light toil, nay rather 'tis a
pleasant rest, and breeds forgetfulness of heavy
labours. There is no nimbler or more delightful
burden than the pen ; other pleasures flee away,
and do you a mischief even while they soothe you ;
your pen soothes you in the taking up, and delights
you in the laying down of it ; and it works profit
not only to its master but to many besides, often
even to the absent, and sometimes to posterity after
thousands of years. I think I speak absolute truth
when I say that of all earthly delights, as there is
none more honourable than literature, so there is
none more I?sting or sweeter or more constant ;
none which plays the comrade to its possessor with
so easily gotten an equipment or with so total a
lack of irksomeness. . . . This do I desire for
i' myself, that when death overtakes me, he may find
' me either reading or writing or, if Christ so will it,
praying and in tears."

Just before this letter was written — so strangely
ignorant could he be of the vernacular works of his
friends— he had read the Decameron for the first
time, and had pleased himself by composing in
Latin a free rendering of the tale of Griselda. An
Englishman may note with keen pleasure that the
story selected by Petrarch for this tribute of admira-
tion was one of those which kindled the imagination
of our own great master in the art of narrative
poetry. This association of the names of Petrarch,

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301

Boccaccio, and Chaucer is no mere accidental stroke
of good luck; the connection between them illus-
trates, belter perhaps than any other single event,
the literary history of the early Renaissance, Pet-
rarch's work, as we have seen, was to spread the
knowledge of the classical authors, and revive their
spirit as the dominant intellectual force of the
world ; he accomplished this almost entirely through
the medium of Latin. The choice was a wise one,
because it gave him all the scholars of Europe for
audience ; but the unletterfed could feel his influence
only at second hand. Boccaccio carried the diffusion 1
of the humanistic spirit a long step further by
breathing it into the vernacular literature of Italy.
Chaucer in his turn did for England what Boccaccio '
had done for Italy ; with him the spirit of the new
learning speaks in our national song and begins
to mould our national life. Chaucer himself was
well aware of the source from which his inspiration
flowed. It is very possible that the Clerk of Oxen-
forde's Prologue alludes to an actual meeting with
Petrarch at Padua in the summer or early autumn
of 1373. However this may be. the words of that
prologue make it clear that Chaucer knew Pet-
rarch's Latin version of the story, and recognised in
its author a master and chief among poets. The
clerk tells a tale —

Lemed at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
As provyd bp his wordes and hU werk.
He is now deed, and nayled in his chest,
Now God yive his soule wel good rest I
Fraunces Petrark, the bureat poete,
Kightc this clerk, whos rethorique swete
Cnlumynd al Ytail of poetrie.

302 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

These letters to Boccaccio are not quite the last
product of Petrarch's unwearied pen, for de Sade is
undoubtedly mistaken in ascribing his version of
the Griselda to the last month of his Hfe ; but, by a
happy neglect of exact chronological sequence, they
have been made to form the last book of the Letters
written in Old Age. There is a beautiful fitness in
the arrangement which makes his correspondence
close with these admirable letters to the friend who
was his peer.

He kept the promise which he had so lately made
in them. Death found him at work. The contra-
dictions of evidence which beset so many incidents
of his life throw some uncertainty over the exact
details of his death. One account states that he
died in Lombardo's arms on July i8th ; another. «
least as well supported by evidence and preferable
in sentiment, represents that he was found dead in
his library, with the unfinished epitome of the Litfts
of Illustrious Men on the desk before him, on the
morning of July 20th, his seventieth birthday.

i

i

.

CHAPTER XIX

CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY

PETRARCH'S funeral was celebrated at Arqui
with great pomp ; Francesco da Carrara might
' be trusted to see to that. He himself attended with
a train of courtiers ; four bishops took part in the
ceremony, and the bier was carried by sixteen
doctors of law. Petrarch's body was dressed in a
red gown, according to some the royal robe which
Robert of Naples had given him for his crowning ;
according to others the dress of a Canon of Padua.
The little chapel which he had hoped to dedicate to
the Virgin had never been built. He was therefore
buried temporarily in the parish church, and six
years later in the sarcophagus of the rather clumsy
Paduan type constructed for the purpose by his son-
in-law. It is disgusting to have to add that his
bones were not allowed to rest undisturbed. At a
time when the tomb stood in need of repair, an arm
was stolen which is said to be now preserved at
Madrid ; and among the relics kept in Petrarch's
house the caretaker shows, with misplaced satisfac-
tion, a box which contains one of the poet's fingers.
His epitaph may best be read, not in the jingling
Latin triolet composed by himself, and still legible
on his tomb, but in the testimony borne to his

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

genius by the man who could most adequately
appreciate it. " Your lamentable letter, my dearest
brother," wrote Boccaccio to Francesco da Brossano,
" reached me on October 20th ; I did not recognise
the writing, but, after undoing the knot and looking
at the signature, I knew at once what I was to read
in the letter, namely, the happy passing of our illus-
trious father and teacher, Francesco Petrarca, from
this earthly Babylon to Jerusalem above. In truth,
although none of our friends save you had written
me the news, I had long since, to my exceeding
sorrow, heard it bruited about by universal report,
and for some days together 1 had wept almost with-
out intermission, not for his ascent, but because I
found myself left in bereavement and misery. And
no wonder : for no mortal man ever stood closer to
me than he. . . . And when I saw and read your
letter, I fell to weeping again for almost a whole
night." Then, after much praise of Petrarch's
piety and some tender, thoughtful messages to " my
sister Tullia," Boccaccio goes on to say that, as a
Florentine, he must grudge to Arquil the guardian-
ship of the illustrious dead " whose noble breast was
the choicest dwelling-place of the Muses and all the
company of Helicon, a shrine devoted to Philosophy
and most rich in store of liberal arts ; yea, a mirror
and glory of such arts, and especially of that one
which concerns itself with Ciceronian eloquence, as
his writings clearly testify." The sailor, who brings
his cargo from far lands to the head of the Adriatic
and sees the tops of the Euganean hills against the
sky, will say to himself and his companions that

CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY 305

" in the bosom of those hills lies he who was the
world's glory, the temple of all learning. Petrarch,
the poet of sweet speech, whom kindly Rome decked
with the triumphal laurel, whose many noble books
live to herald forth his most sacred fame." Similarly,
in his book on the Genealogies of the Gods, written
some years earlier, Boccaccio had spoken of " Fran-
cesco Petrarca, the Florentine, my most revered
teacher, father, and lord, ... a man who should be
counted among the company of the illustrious
ancients rather than among modern men : who is
acknowledged for a chief poet, I will not say merely
by the Italians, whose singular and everlasting glory
he is, but also in France, in Germany, and in that
most distant corner of the earth, England, and by
many of the Greeks. . . . Now there lie open to us
many works of his, both in verse and prose, most
worthy to be commemorated, which bear to and fro
the sure testimony of his heavenly talent"

Similar testimonies might be multiplied from the
writings of Benvenuto da Imola, from Coluccio
Salutati, and others. But enough has been said
to show that those contemporaries of Petrarch who
were best qualified to judge, unanimously esteemed
him their master and leader in learning. From this
leadership he derives his claim to rank among those
who have inaugurated new eras and changed the cur-
fwnt of the world's intellectual history. It is not pre-
tended that he was the sole scholar of his day. He
had predecessors in the so-called Dark Ages, whose 1
enthusiasm for the classical authors known to them
was as great as his own ; in every country that he

3o6 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

visited he found contemporaries zealous for learn-
ing ; he had devoted pupils and fellow -workers who
shared his high aims and rivalled even his indefatig-
able industry. What distinguishes him from all the
rest is the wonderful power of his influence. Pre-
ceding scholars had been quite unable to make
scholarship a power in the world ; men did not
change their modes of thought in the twelfth
century because John of Salisbury wrote good
Latin, or in the early fourteenth because Richard
de Bury composed PhUobiblon. But with Petrarch,
and because of him, the classical spirit resumed its
sway ; people without the least pretensions to
scholarship began to think and talk in the ways
approved by scholars ; the leaven of " the human-
ities" leavened the whole lump of society.

It is not possible precisely to define the quality of
temperament which enabled Petrarch to communi-
cate the spirit which others had only been able to
possess ; " charm " affords the only explanation, and
charm defies analysis. It is evident from his whole
career that he possessed both intellectual and
personal charm to a rare degree ; he fascinated
men's imagination and fired their hearts. Entire
strangers came as pilgrims aglow with enthusiasm
to Vaucluse, and having seen the poet, they went
back to spread the fame of him through all lands.
So his reputation grew, and his influence became
more potent every day ; and the studies that he
loved, from being the monopoly of a handful of
scholars, became the Inspiration of the world's
culture.

CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY 307

The triumph was far more than a mere intellectual
tuccess ; it was a triumph of personality and char-
icter. and like all great spiritual triumphs, it was
liardly won. Petrarch enjoyed moments of intense
liappiness, but he was not a happy man ; his life
■as one of storm and stress, of anxious self-ques-
tioning, and of severe emotional conflict. The very
liumanlty, by virtue of which he quickened the souls
bf others, gave his own soul for a prey to warring
issions; only by such spiritual pangs could the new
birth be accomplished.

Surely it is precisely this human sensitiveness,
his intensity of nature, which most endears him to
He had his faults ; who cares to remember
fthem ? or rather who would do this glorious man
Fthe disservice of caring to conceal them? and who
shall stand In the judgment if this man falls ? As a
consummate artist he wins our admiration ; as father
of the new learning he claims our filial piety ; but
most of all we love and cherish in him the eager
student, the passionate devotee of high ideals, the
incomparable friend.

< - »

■ INDEX

1

^na:iaiuoIi, Angelo, Bishop of

AstrologerinterruptsP.'sharangue

^V Florence, rs6-7, 169

at Mflan, 184

^Mcciaiuoli, Niccol6, Grand Sencs-

Augustine, St.: the De Civitate

^K chal of Naples, 168-9, '^Si '9-<

Dei and the Confessions, 56;

■ 203,114

P.'s enthusiasm for him, 56-7 ;

^Hnccursio, Malnaxdo : his character

"Sors" taken on Mont Ventoux,

^ and friendship with P., 50-1 ;

70-1 ; Commentary on Psalms

^^^^1

' his visit to Parma and murder

given to P. by Boccaccio, 2io ;
P. gives Confessions to Marsili,

by brigands, 143-4

^^^^H

Africa, P.'s epic pocra : begun at

267-8

Vaucluse, 90 ; resumed in the

Averroists, 265-6

Silva Plana and finished at

Avignon : Petracco goes there,

Parma, 104 ; its history and

13 ; scat of Papacy, 14 ; lack of

^^^^1

appreciation of it, 224-7 ; iines

accommodation, 15; P.'s hatred

falsely supposed 10 have been

of, 28 ; advantages of residence

taken from Silius, ib.

there, 28-30 ; society there.

Aix-la-Chapelle, 58

30-1 ; papal palace begun, 79 ;

Albaniani, Donalo degli, 260-1,

P.'s flight from, 89 ; his return

262

from Italy, 107; P. leaves in

Alberti, v. Innocent VI

1343. " " : returns in 1345, 1 17 ;

Albii/i, Francesco degli, 137

leaves again in 1347, 13' !
ravages of the plague, 140: re-
visited, 156, 164 ; P.'s last visit.

Albomoz, Cardinal, 182, 194, 24S

Aldus, his cursive type not copied

176; Nelli visited there by

Atnmirato, Scipione, 250

Giovanni, 213

Ancestors of P., 1

Ako da Correggio, v. Correggio

Andrew of Hungary, 111,1 13, 120

Anguillara, Orso del!', 75; as

Baiani, Ghilberlo, 136

Senator crowns P., 97-9

BaihfPs wife at Vaucluse, tS9--6o

Anna, Empress, 198

Bile, earthquake, 196-7

Annibatdi. Paolo, 78, 98

Banditti, 97, 102, 114. 143-4. 174

Apology in answer fa a Frtnch-

Barbato, Marco: P.'s intimacy

«..«, 286

with, 96-7, 113; the PseHcal

Ardennes, forest, 60

Letters dedicated lo him, 216 ;

^^^^H

Areiio, P.'s birthplace, 7, 8 ; P.'s

bis death, 243

visit, 152

Bardi, Roberto de'. Chancellor of

Aristotle, 165

Paris University, 93

Arqui; P.'s first visit, 181 ! house-

Barili, Giovanni, 96, 97, 1 13, 303

hold expenses, 387-8 ; descrip-

Barlaam, Abbot : meets P., 89 ;

tion of, 288-9; f- forced to

Boccaccio's description of hint.

B leave, 291 ; his death and burial

(■*.; bis mission toAvignon, 90;
revisits Avignon and begins to

^ there, y>z-l

H

■9

^

teach P. Creek and learn
Latin from him, 108 ; Bishop
of Geraci, 16.

Bcaurae, Ste., 88

Beccaria, the, of Pavia, 19J, 19S-9,

Benedict XI, Pope, 6

Benedict XII, Pope : his election,
64 ; friendly to P., ib. ; P.'s Brat
letter to him, 65 ; gives P. pre-
ferment, it. \ P.'s second letter,
79, cf. 272 ; begins palace at
Avignon^ i6. ; sanctions the
Correggi's schemes, 101-3 ; his
death, 107

Beniniendi de' Ravegnani, 146

BeDvenuiada Imola, f . Imola

Bergamo, 207-8

Boccaccio : P.'s letter to hitn on
culture and religion, 57 ; his
descriptian of the Plague, 135 ;
character, genius, and friend-
ship with P., 148-501 date of
their first meeting and earliest
extant correspondence, iS'-^;
brings P. decree revoking his
banishment, 153; his remon-
strance in ibrni of a pastoral
dialogue, 179-B0; admired P.'s
Ittvectiva, 193 ; visits P. in
Milan, 209-1 ■ \ their commerce
of books, sio; letters to him,
ib. ; Boccaccio's grievance, ib. ;
sends P. the Diviia Contmtdia,
211 ; his enthusiasm for P.'s
Letters,zi9; also for the ./4/mu
and for P.'s treatises, 125-7 !
eulogy of P., 229 ; his descrip-
tion of Fr. da Urossano, 235 ;
Iri^htened by a supposed reve-
lation i P.'s noble letter ihereon,
236-41 ; visit to Venice, 242-3 ;
P.'s cry of anguish in letter to
him, 243 ; letters to him, 253-7 ;
his rank as poet, ib. ; visits
Avignon, ib. ; anxious about
P.'s independence, 259 ; visits
Venice, but misses P., 280-1 ;
P. rejects B.'s advice to cease
work, 294-300 ; the TaJt of
GriseUla^ 300-1 : P., U., and
Chaucer, ib. ; B.'s grief at P.'s
death and eulogy of him, 304-5

310 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Bohemia, John, King oC ^- )^m

Bologna : P. al University, ll-}^
P. leaves, 24 ; papal casde built,
63-4> IIS ; state after war, 143;
Pope Urban's funetal, 184

Bolsena, 152

Bonibce VIII, Pope, 4

Book- hunting, 43

Borromeo, Cardinal, 87

Boulogne, Cardinal Gui dc, 164

Bretigny, Peace of, 230

Brossano, Francesco da, P.'s
son-in-law, 235, 364, 381, joj,
304

Bruno, Francesco, 244, 351, nt,
269, 287

Bucolicum Carm^n^ ». Eclogues

Uuoncon\-enio, 13

Hury, Richard dc, 53, 306

Bussolari, Fra Jacopo : bis revo-
lution in Pavia, I9S^: P,"*
shameful letter to him, ii. ;
his heroism and surrendci,
251-3

Cabassoles, Philip de. Bishop of
Cavaillon : lineage, character,
and friendship with P., 8^-4;
at Naples, 112; at Cavaitlu
and Vauduse, 119-20: the Dt
Vita Sol. dedicated to him, it-,
cf. 256; P. and Socrates vtwi
him, 120-1 J P.'s last vioi
to Cavaillon, 174-5 ; letien,
245 ; his promotion, ib.; meets
Boccaccio, 256 : Cardinal and
Bishop of Sabina, 281-3 ; Le-
gate in Umbria, and dealta, 391

Cxsars, medals o^ 191

Caloria, Toromaso, 22-3, io5

Canigiani, v. Kletta

Cansomtre : special cluiracter-
istics, 38-9 ; Italian and Pn>-
venial influences, 40 ; reflects
P.'s individuality, ib. ; its imi-
tators, ib. ; its contents, Afy^i

lone of the second part,']

place in literary history, ■

Capitol, V. Rome

Capra, Enrico, 207-8

Capnmica, 74-7

Cardinals. Commission tin B
afTairs, 169

»

[ Carpentra.s : P. taken to live there,

15 ; death of Clement V there,
ib. ; P. goes to school, 16 ;
canonry, 250

I Carrara, Francesco da, lord of
Padua : friendship with P., 65,
cf. 292 ; Vicar Imperial, 189-
90 ; defeated by Venice, 291-1 ;
attends P.'s funeral, 303
f Carrara, Francesco Novello da,
291

Carrara, JacupD II da: friendship
with P., 65, 141-2; character,
ib. ; procures P. canonry at
Padua, ii/. ; death and P.'s
grief, 154; epitaph, 155

Castiglionchio, v. Lapo

Cavaillon, Bishop oi, v. Cabas-

Cavailloo, city, 83, 174

Celso, Ciutio, 229

Celso, Lorenwi, Doge, 248-50

Charles, Duke of Normandy,
afterwards Dauphin, 231

Charles IV, Emperor; as Prince
of Bohemia commands his
father's troops in Italy, 54 ; his
election as King of the Romans,
187 ; P.'s letters to him, itq;
invites P. to his Court, ib. • his
compact with the Pope, ii, ;
arrival in Italy and disappoint-
ments, coronation in Milan and
Rome, and return to Germany,
189-93 1 P-'s visit and exhorta-
tions to him, 190-1 ; crowns
Zanobi, 192 ; secret hosiiUtv
to the Visconti, 195 ; P.'s
embassy to him, 196-7 ; his
Golden Bull, 197; embellish-
fiient of Prague, ii. ; creates
P. Count Palatine, 198 ; gift
of drinking-cup with invitation,
232 ; P.'s reply, ib. ; P. invited
again, starts, but is forced to
turn back, 236 ; Charles visits
Rome and makes mischief in
Tuscany, 284

Charles of Valois, his mission
to t'lorence and treachery,

Chaucer, 300-1

KX 311

Church: P.enlers,27; hisattacks
on and loyalty to, 271-2

Ciano, 104

Cicero : MSS. of the Laws and
De Gloria lost, 17, 27 ; P.'s
boyish admiration, 18; MS. of
the Rhetoric spared by Petracco,
20; MSS. at LiSge, 434; P-
finds his Zf//erj at Verona, 115-
t6 ; P.'s enthusiasm for C, ib.,
and his two letters to him, ib. ;
MSS. lent by Lapo, 151 ; epi-
sode of a Ciceronian enthusiast,
JSS-6; P.'s MS. of C's Utters
injures his leg, 205-6; MSS.
copied for V. by Boccaccio, 210;
P.'s master and pattern, 221,
cf. 227

Cino da Pistoia ; never P.'s tutor,
22 ; exchange of poems and
influence on P., 22, 40

Clarence, Lionel, Duke of, 279-80

Classics and classical literature,
V. Revival of learning

Cl«ment V, Pope, 11, 12; re-
moves Papacy to Avignon, 13;
dies. IS

Clement VI, Pope; election and
character, 107 ; favours P. and
confers many benehces on him,
108, cf. 117 ; offers him papal
secretaryship, 117; attitude to
Rienzi, 127, 129; iries to re-
concile Venice and Genoa,
167-8 ; mediates in troubles at
Naples, 168 ; buys countship of
Provence, ib. ; appoints Com-
mission on Roman al&irs, 169 ;
imprisons and releases Rienzi,
170; his death, 171-2; P.'s
poetical letter to him, 272

Cola di Rienzo, v. Rieiui

Cologne, 58-60

CoIonna,the: formerly Ghibellins,
rallied to the Pope, 45 ; their
feud with the Orsmi, 61 ; their
misgovemment of Rome, 127 ;
slaughtered by Rienzi, 131, 133

Col on n a, Agapito, Uishop of

Colonna, Agapito the Younger,
Colonna, Agnese, 75, 77

312 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Colonna.Giacomo; publishes Bull
of excommunication against
Lewis of Bavaria, 45 ; Bishop of
Lombez, i6. ; lakes P . ibcre, 46 ;
(heir friendship, tb. ; presents
P. lo his brother, 48 ; his return
to Rome, 60-1 ; P.'s ode to him,
63 ; his bantering letter of in-
vitation to P., 72-3 i takes P.
to Rome, 77 ! poetical Latin
letter to, 79 ; his death and
apparition to P., 106

Colonna, Giovanni, Cardinal : his
pleasantry with Convennole, 16;
receives P. into his household,
4S i character and friendship
for P., 48-so ; P.'s letter to him
from Capranica, 75 ; introduces
P. lo Dauphin Humbert, 87 ;
invited lo sup at Vauduse,
91 ; P. consults him about his
coronation, 93-4 ; probably re-
called P. to Avignon, 107 ; P.'s
letters to him from Naples,
112 ; strained relations and
separation, 129-31 '• his death,
140

Colonna, Giovmnm di San Viio,
52.77

Colonna, Stefano it Giovane ; de-
feats the Orsini, 61 ; escons P.,
77; Senator, 78; expelled from
Rome by Rienzi, 128 ; killed in
battle with many of his House,
131

Colonna, Stefano il Vecchio :
character and affection for P.,
SI-2; eulogises P., 99; takes
P, to Praeneste, 112; sur-
vives all his sons, 131, 140;
P.'s letter of condolence to

Colonna, Stefano, great-grandson

of old Stefano, 268-9
Coluccio, V. Salutati

[6; his affection for P.,
id. ; helped by Petracco and P.,
I'i. 1 loses Cicero's Be Gioria,
17, 27 ; his return to Prato and
death there, 1 7
Copyists, V. Revival of learning

Corio, 252

Coronation, v. Laurel

Correggio, Ano da : friendship
with P., 65 I meets him at
Avignon, 66 : P. pleaiis his
cause, 67 ; revisits Avignon,
88-g : goes with P. to Naples,
95, and Rome, 97 ; regains
Parma, 102-3; his quarrels and
intrigues, 114-15 1 a refugee
at Verona, 116; his unhappy
career and death, 235-6

Corvara, Abbey and Abbot of,
156-8

Crete, 248-9

Cristiano, Luca, of Piacenia :
character and friendship with
P., 50-1 ; letter from P. to biro,
142; visit to Parma and ad-
venture with brigands, 143-41
P. renounces Canonry in his
favour, 171

Crown of Song, v. Laurel

Dandoto, Andrea, Doge, 183, 246
Dante: of the White Guelf paitr,
3 ; eulogy of Henry Vil, 12;
refuses to recant, 13; view of
Rome in the De AfonarJtiO, 74.
cf. 123 ; desired laurel cro«m,
92, cf. 211 ; Divina Comnudta
sent to P. by Boccaccio ; P.'s
letter thereon,2ii-i2; P.'s sup-
posed jealousy of him, ti. ; con-
„. — .: — jjf (Jp D* MontmkiA,

227

Dauphin, v. Charles, Humbert
Decameron, v. Boccaccio
De Conlempiu Mundi: quotations

relating 10 Laura, 37, 139 ;

composition and nature of the

dialogues, 109-IO
De Otio Rdigiosorum, 1 30
De Rtmediis Utriusque Fortune:

its importance. 227; dedicated

to Azzo da Correggio, 235
De Republica opUme adwunit-

traiida, 1S8, 292-3
De tut ipiiut et multorttmt igma-

De yifis JUustriius: P.'s great
history, probably begun in early
years at Vauduse, 90; probaUe

allusion to, 15S1 still unfinished
■" '3S4t <9i ; >t3 imporUuicCi

228-9

De Vila Solitaria: its dedication,
84, and composition, 119-20;
its importance, 227 ; finally
copied, 256

Despots, Italian, general charac-
teristics, 66-7

Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro,
Fra : inlimate relations with P.
and influence, 5S-6; letter to
him with account of ascent of
Mont Ventoux, 67-7 1 ; his death,
106-7, cf. 207-8

Domitian, Emperor, 92

Dondi deir Orologio, 193-4

Doria, Paganino, 183

Eclogues, P.'s Latin : composed
at Vaucluse,9o; ihe Divortium,
130 ; appreciation of them and
their place in literary history,
=33-4

EleitaCanigiani, P.'s mother: her
marriage, 3 ; lives at Areizo,
6; gives birth to P., 7 ; lives
at Incisa, S-9 ; accompanies
Petracca to Pisa, 11, Avignon,
13, and Carpentras, 15 ; "best
of all mothers," :8; her death
and P.'i eulogy of her, 24-5

Eletto, granddaughter of P., 15,

Empire, v. Rome
Enia, River, 104
Epislola, V. Letters
Epitome of the Lives of llluilrious
Attn, 128, 260, 302

Faliero, Marino, Doge, 147
Ferrara, battle, 55 j P.'s illness,

283
Ferrara, Marquis of, 1 14. I41
Flanders, P.'s travels in, 5E
Florence : native city of P.'s
family, 2 ; parry politics of, 3-7 ;
opposes Henry VII, 13, Lewis
m Bavaria, 44, and John of
Ilohemia, 54 ; claims Lucca, 88 ;
P.'s visits in 1350, 148. 152;
■ votes P.'s recall from eiile
^R and restoration of his property,

153; antagonism to Milan, 179-

80 i plan to get P. a Canonry,

250
Fournier. Jacques, v. Benedict X 1 1
Fracassetti, 114, i77, 189, 251,

262
France, slate after war, 232
Francesca : daughter of P., 84,

1 10 ; her marriage, 235 ; lives

with v., id.; "TuUia," 281, trf.

304
Francesco, grandson of P., 235,

281

da Brossano, v. Bros-

Gabrini, v. Rienzi

Garda, Lago di, p. 116

Carzo, Ser, P.'s great-grand-
father, 1

Gen^vre, Mont, 156, 176

Genoa, 14, 132 ! war with Venice
and P.'s letter thereon, 167-8 ;
defeat, submission to Milan,
and victory, S2-4 ; P. gradually
estranged from, 246

Ghent, 58

Gherardo, P.'s brother; bom at
Incisa, 9; ^oes (o Bologna, 21 ;
leaves it with P., 23 ; lives with
him at Avignon, 31 ; ascends
Mont Ventoux with him, 67-71 ;
visits the Ste. Beaume and
Montrieu, 88 ; visited by P. at
Monirieu,iioj P.'s second visit
to him there, 174^5 ; his heroic
conduct, ib.

Ghibellin : general tendency of
the party, 4 ; the name becomes
a mere badge, 44

Giovanni, son of Petrarch ; birlh,
character, and unhappy rela-
tions with P., 84-6 ; at school
in Verona, 116, and at Parma,
136; leaves Paduawith P., 15s;
appointed Canon of Verona,
sent there, expelled, and returns
to P.'s home, 184-5 ; expelled
(ot misconduct, 212-13 ; oeath,
P.'s lamentation, and note in
the Virgil, 233-4

3'4

PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES

Giov&nni Andrea, Proressoi of
Law and P.'s tutor, 3i-i

Giovanni da Ficciue gives P.
advice, 32

Gladiatorial games at Naples,

113

GoDisga, the, of Mantua, 147-8,

190
Great Company, 13s, 177. 275
Creek, P.'s attempt to learn,

■08-9
Gregory XI, Pope, 3S6-7
Grimoard, Cardinal, 279
Grimoard, Guillaume, v. Urban V
Grosseleste, Robert, 100, 130
Guelf: genera] tendency of the
wly, 4 ; its supremacy in
Florence, ii. ; feud of White
and Black Guelfs, i*. ; the
White Guelf political creed,
133, 188,270
Guido, Don, 137-8
Guido Settimo, v. Settimo
Gulielmo da Pastrengo, v. Past-

Henry VII, Emperor, expedition
to Italy, and death, 11-13

Homer : P.'s MS. and delight in
its possession, 185-6 ; trans-
lation made for him, 357-8

Humanism,?'. Revival of learning

Humbert II, Dauphin of Vienne;,
87-8

Hungary, v. Andrew, Lewis

Innocent VI, Pope : election and

character, 172-3; threatens to
excommunicate P.as wizard,/^.;
offersP. the papal secretaryship,
204 ; death, 342

Isabelle de Valois, 330

Italy ; P.'s passion for, v. Odes ;
Rome: his salutationfrom Mont
Genivre, 176; rumoured pro-
ject of invasion, 195-6

Jacopo II da Carrara, t", Carrara
Joanna, Queen of Naples, S3,
111-13, 120, 168

John, King of ikibetnia
vasion (rf Italy, 53-$; oeaiam
Cr^cy, 16., cf, 187

John, King of France, 171, t]p-t

John XXll, Pope: secretly a-
courages John of Bohtnu,
54-; : his Bull against Rooiaa
fanidy feuds, 61 ; feigns in-
tention of returning to It^,
62-3; death and charactci^a|

Jongleurs, Proven^, 253

L^lius : his real naoie Ldkt
Stefani, 46 ; lineage, characRr,
and friendship with P., it.;
sends P. bad news of Rituri,
132; P.'s answer, 133; letters
to, 14S, 191, 19S; waits en
Charles IV, 19a ; qtiarrel and
reconciliation with Socrates,
201-3 i death, 343

Lapo da CastigUonchio : his great
erudition, ijo-t ; exchanges
books with P., ii. ; bis copy of
P.'s letters, id.

Laura : P.'s first sight of her, 33 ;
not known who she was, 33-^;
allegorical theory combated,
J4-i, cf. 73, 86 ; effect on P. of
his loi-e for her, 36-9 ; at
Avignon, 53 ; progress and
episodes of P.'s love, 80, Si, 89,
118; death of L. and P.'s tMry
on the Virgil fly-leaf, 137-8;
tone of his Utter poems, 138-9

Laurel Crown of Song : object of
P.'s ambition, 73, cf- 92 ; its
traditions, 93 ; offered from
Rome and Paris, ii. ; conferred,
97-101 ; stimulates P. to work,
104 ; V. also Uante

Law : P. compelled to study, iS-
33 1 abandons the study, 37

Learning, v. Revival of learning

Lello Steiani, v. La^ius

Letter to PosUrity, 138; its com-
position and significance, 293

Letters, P.'s Latin Poetical :
various allusions to, 53, 65, 79,
119, 136, 1S4, 272 ; arrang^ in
I3}9 and dedicated to Barbalo,
2]6 ; appreciation of them,

INDEX 315 ^1

Letters, P.'s Latin Prose, quoted

Milan (ti. also Visconti) : though ^^^H

passim: many written in 135 1-3,

Ghibellin, opposes Lewis of ^^^H

t;g; many burnt, 316; arrange-

Bavaria, 44, and John of Bo- ^^^H

ment of the rest and dedication

hernia, 54 ; P.'s Virgil there, ^^^H

of the Familiar LeltiTi to

86-7 ; leagued with Mantua ^^^H

Socrates, 216-18, cf. 263; ap-

against Ferraia and Parma, ^^^H

preciation of their value, 218,

114: P.'s house near Church ^^^H

cf. 222 ; Ep. Smiks, 217, 244-5 i

of SL Ambrose, 179; anlagon- ^^^H

£^. 5,«71/«/o,2i8,27i

ism to Florence, 179-Bo; long ^^^H

Lewis of Bavaria, Emperor: in-

exempt from plague, 181 ; ^^^H
Charts IVreceives Iron Crown, ^^H

vasion of Italy and coronation

by an anti-pope, 44 : retreats

191-2; Boccaccio visits P., ^^^H

from Rome and Italy, /*. ; en-

209-11; P.'s house robbed, 213; ^^^H

courages and then opposes John

P. migrates to monastery of ^^^H

of Bohemia, S3-4 ; hostility to

San Simpliciano, 213-14; P. ^^H

the I'apacy, excommunication

returns from France, 232 ; his ^^^^|

and death, 187

connection becomes less inti- ^^^H

Lewis the Fleming, v. Socrates

mate, 246 ; marriage of Duke ■

Lewis of Hungary, 120, 135, 168,

of Clarence, 279-80 |

195-6

Miliarino, Priory of S. Nicholas, 1

Lewis of Tarentum, 120, 168

io8 J

Library,?. 's: "his adopted daugh-

Minstrels, wandering Italian, ^^^1

ter," 165-6; intention to leave

253-4 ^^H

it to Venice never fulfilled, 241 ;

Modena, 115; Canonry there, 171 ^^^H

its dispersal, 242

Monet, Raymond: P.'s bailiff at ^^^H

_ Li^ge : P.'s first visit, discovery

Vaucluse, 162 ; his death and ^^^H

L of MSS. and penury of ink.

eulogy, 164-7 ^^H

H 43-4 ; his second visit, 58

Montferrat, Marquis of, 195, 252 ^^^H

■ Literature, -v. Revival of learn-

Monlpettier, P. studies law, 18 ^^^H

1 ing

Monlrieu, Monastery, v. Gherardo ^^^H

■ Liternum, or Lintemum, P.'s villa

■ near Milan, 213

Naples, P.'s first visit, 94-7 i title ^^H

■ Livti of JUuilrious Men, v. Dt

of its king, 16. ; anarchy and ^^^H

W t^iris, etc.

corruption after Robert's death, ^^^H

Loi era, battle, 182-3

110^13; pacification of^ 167-8, ^^^H

LombardodellaSete,ordaSeiico,

V. also Robert ^^^H

260, 288, 302

Napoleon, 8, 87 ^^^H
Nclli, Francesco, Prior of the ^^^1

Lombc; ; P.'s first visit, 45-8 ; P.

obtains Canonry there, 65

Church of the Holy Apostles ^^^1

Luca Cristiano, v. Crlstlano

Lu»era, Castle, 148

b^ P. : their meeting and close ^^^H

Lyons, 60

friendship, 150, ct 209 ; favours ^^^H

Don Ubertino, 156-7; letters ^^^H

MacchiaveUi, 188, 293

to him, 159, 196, 2ic^ 233, 235; ^^^1

Mainardo Accursio, v. Accursio

remonstrates with P., i79-&oi ^^^1

Malatesla, the, of Rimini. 194

young Giovanni visits bim, 213; ^^^H
his death, 243 ^^^1

Malatesta, Carlo, 363

Malatesta, Pandolfo, 194-S, 189

Mantua, 114, 136, I4t, 147,

Ociko, Johann, Bishop of Olmuti, ^^^|

Marsili, Luigi, 366-8

Odes : Cht dtblf to far. 1 40 : Uatia ^^H

■ Martini, Simone, commonly called

Afia,4Z,S4,i7(>-7lOMfifltata, ^^H

■ Memmi, 29

63; ^>t>-A?(;«KA'/,43, 116 ^^H

3t6 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES ^|

Olympius, 5 1

19-20; death and chatartl^l

Orsini, the, 61,74, ll?

24 ; his fortune stolen by tlic

Orso, V. AnguiUara

trtisiees, 26

Olio RtUgiosorum, De, v. De Otto

Philip VI, King o* France: in

Religiosorum

league with John of Bohemu,

54 ; promises to lead Cruad^

Padoi, 136, 141-2; P.'sCanonry

62 ; drops project, 63

there, ii. ; translation of Sl

Anthony's body, 147 ; P. leaves

Philosophy : badly taught at die

in 1351, 154 ! Charks IV visits,

Universities, z I ; P.'s conception

189; P. in residence there, 209,

of, 227 ; medixval conception,

J36, 148, 178, jgi : defeat by

iS. J the Averroisu, 265-6

Venice, 291-2

Physicians: P.'s feud with, 171-3;

Paganino B.iraero, 144-5

his Invtctiva cotUra MeiUcuwt^

Paleologo, V. Montferrat

193 ; fortunate disobedience to,

Papacy, V. Avignon, Guelf, Rome

189-90

Pardo wi Iz, E mes t von , Archbishop

Piacenza, 156, 192

of Prague, 197

Pilaio, Leoniio, 243, 257-9

ParenK), Ser, P.'s grandfather, 3

Pino, Antonio, saved P.'s Virgil,

Paris; P.'sfirst visit, 55,58; offers

87

P. the laurel, 93 ; P.'s visit as

Pisa, 11-13, '"*• '35. ig**- "92

Ambassador 10 King John,

Pistoia, ongin of the White and

230-1 ; Marsili's repute there.

Blacit Guelf feud, 4

267

Pistoia, Cino da. v. Cino

Parma : feud of Correggi and

Plague, the Great, 135-7, 140, 181,

Rossi, 66 ; expulsion of Vero-

233-6. 243

nese and entry of Correggi,

Po, P.s voyage m time of war.

102-4; P- scitles there, 104;

280

his second stay and escape

Poetry ; P.'s vocation, 27 ; medi-

during siege, 113-15; P. made

eval doctrine of, 223; "most

Canon and Archdeacon, 117:

glorious of the arts," 194

P.'s home in 1348-9,136.142;

Poetry, Provencal, 29, 39, 253

subsequent residence there,
147
Pastrengo, Gulielmo da, 66-7, 89,

Poggeno, Cardinal, Papal Legate,
Poitiers, Peter of: visits Vauduse,

116,148,185

82 ; meets P. in Paris, 231-2

Patras, Archbishop of, 149

Pommiires, de, w. Sagmmor

Pavia, 198-200, 251-3, 278

Peschiera, 116

of, 105 ^^H

Pestilence, v. Pl^ue

Porto Lungo, 183 ^^^H

Peter of Poiiiers, v. Poitiers

Prague, P. visits, 197 ^^H

Peter of Siena, his supposed

Prato, Convennole da, v. ^^^H

vision, 237

^^^H

Pelracco, Ser, P.'s father, 2 ;

Prato Magno, 9. 10 ^^^H

position, marriage, condemna-

Praio, Niccolo da, Cardl^^H

Legate in Tuscany, 6, 7 ^^H

envoy for his party, 6; visits
Incisa by stealth, 9 ; goes to
Pisa, 12; leaves Italy and settles

Quintilian, his Institutwu ^^^|

P.'s letter to him, 152 ^^^|

in Provence, 13-15; talent for

literature, 18; lirst encourages,
then prohibits P.'s classical

Kavenna, Giovanni da, 262 ^^^|

Raven nas, Adolescens, 262-4^^^!

studies, 18-19; bums P.'s books,

Raziolini, Luigi, 229 ^^H

Reggio, 104, 114

Reiiaissance,T/.Rcvivaloflearning

Reports of P. 'a death, false,
350

Revival of learning : I', devotes
himself to it, 37 i literature as
a profession, ii. ; P. diligent in
collecting MSS., 43 ; his view
of the nght relation between
culture and religion, s6-?. cf.
138-41 J P.'s coronation marks
important epoch in, loo-i ; P,'s
zeal and work for, 105, cf. 305 ;
P. accepted as its prophet, 141 ;
general spread of tne move-
ment, 1%; P.'s industry in copy-
ing MSS. and generosity m
employing copyists, 147 ; his
complaints against copyists, ii.,
cf- 'S'l 157. 287; his Greek
MSS. of Homer and Plato,
185-6 i importance of P.'s Latin
writings in furthering the move-
ment, 319-37; sense in which
P. is rightly called the Founder
of Humanism, 319-30, cf. 339,
305-6 ; his valuable conception
of continuity of history, 33i ;
his revival of the critical spirit,
id. ; P, took men back to the
Ciceronian standpoint, i*., cf.
337 ; and to that of the classical
historians, 338

Rhine, the ; riverside ceremony
58 ; earthi^uake throughout the
valley, 10

Rhone, the, "windiest of rivers,"
aS ; P.'s joy at sight of, 60

Rienii, 132-34 (chap. VII.) fias-
sim; prisoner at Avignon, 170

Rime, *. Can*ottiere

Rinaldo da Villafranca, 116, 1S5

Rinucci, V. Nelli

Robert, Friar, its

Robert, King of Naples, 83 ;
P.'s admiration for him, 93-4 ;
character, 94-5 ; honours P.,
95-6 ; his robe, 96, 98, 303 ;
favours the Correggi, 101-3

Roche, Cardinal Androuin de la.

348

Roger, Pierre,
Gregory XI

. Clement VI,

fc;x 317

Rome : P. jealous for her rights,
z8 ; Lewis of Bavaria's coro-
nation and retreat, 44 ; P.'x
enthusiasm for Rome and Italy,
his view of the continuity of
herhisiory,his political idealism
centred in her supremacy, 73-4,
122-5, 188-9, '9'i 330-1, 226,
270-8, 285-6; P.'s first visit,
77-9 ; offers the laurel, 93 ; P.
accepts, 94 ; his coronation,
97-101 ; P. made a citizen, 99 ;
P.'s third visit, iii ; Roman
embassy to Clement VL 135-6;
Rienri's revolution, 116-34 !
P.'s last visit in year of Jubilee,
152 ; Commission of Cardinals
on Roman affairs ; P.'s advice,
169 ; Charles IV crowned, 193 ;
temporary return of Papacy,
276-83 ; P.'s answer to a
Frenchman, 385-6

Rossetti, Domenico, 338, 273

Rossi, of Parma, 66-7

Sade, Abb(5 de, 36, 38, 177

Sade, Hugo de, 36

Sagramor dc PommiJres, 189,

19(^7
Salisbury, John of, 100, 220, 306
Salutati, Coluccio, 150-1,361,263,

367. 30s
San Simpiiciano, 213-14
Scala, Bartolommeo detia, Bishop

of Verona, 88
Scala, Can H, della, 185, 190
Scala, Masiino della, 66-7, 88-9,

102-3
Scandiano, 115
Scipio Africanus the Elder, P.'s

ideal Roman and hero dL his

Africa^ ffi, 335
Scott, Michael, 265
Secretaryship, papal, 117. 170-1,

203-4, 343
Secrtlum,v. De ConUmptu Mundi
Selvapiana, or Silva Plana, 104
Seneca, quoted, 73, 160
Serico, da, or Sete, della, v.

Lombardo
Settimo, Guido : P.'s lifelong

friend, 14; his companion at

home, school, and University,

3i8 PETRARCH AND HIS TIMES ^|

14-30: taken with P. to Vau-

Ubertino, Don, v. Corran ^^^^

dusc, 17; letters to him, 118,

Urban V, Pope : offered P. aiel

34S. n6; death, 281

papal secretaryship, 104, d

Sicily, the Two Sicilies, *.

242 : election and character,

Naples

:!42 ; believes rumour of I'.'s

■Silius lislictis, 325

death and confers his benefices 1

Simonides, v. Nelli

on others, 250-1 ; P.'s admin- '

Socrates : bis real aame Lewis,

tion for him, ib. ; his rctuni to 1

47: origin, character, and friend-

Rome and back again to Aing-

ship with P., 47-8 ; lives with

non, 270-84 (chap, xvti.) pit-

him in Cardinal Col anna's

sim: P.'s letters to him, 272-6,

house, 50; visit to Cavaillon,

177-8 ; invites P. to Rome, 278.

120; P.'sletier to him narrating

2S3 [ death and fuaeral, 284

deaths of friends, 144, 158;

other leiiers to him, 151, 156;

Vallombrosa, Abbot and MAey

quarrel and reconciliation with
Lalius, Joi-3; the Familiar

of, 156-S

Varro : MSS. copied for P. by

Utters dedicated to him, ai6-

Boccaccio, 210

17 ; his death and P.'s grief;

Vaucluse : P.'s first visit. 17, 18:

and entry on the Virgil fly-

settles there, 8o-i ; life and

leaf, 234-5

work there, 81, 82, 90, 109-14

Sonnets, allusions to: Chiart,

117-10; description ot 118-19;

frestke, 139 ; // successor, 63 j

the last sojourn, 156-76; his

MilU piagge, 60: Perch' io.

bailiffs wifb, 159-61 ; his rude

77 ; Per mexii, 60 ; Per mir»r.

victual, 161-2 ; his bouse and

29 ; Quanda giunse, ii. ; Vago

two gardens, 163-4; his bailiffs

augelletlo, 139; Vtrgognaitdo,
58-9 ; Vinst Annibal, 62

death and eulogy, 164-7 : his

library there, 165-6 ; P. leaves.

Soranzio, Raimondo, 33

returns, and leaves agun for

Sorgue, source of, v. Vaucluse

the last lime, 174-6 ; his wish

SfiirU Gtntil, v. Odes

to return in 1 361 frustrated, 236

Statins crowned with the laurel,

Venice : war with Genoa, 167-8;

9z

P.'s letter thereon, ib. ; victory

Strada, v. Zanobi

and defeat, 182-4 ; P.'s em-

Style, literary : P.'s instinct for it,

bassy, ib. ; sues for peace, ib. \

218 ; his demand in respect of

visited by P., 2oq ; P. takes

11,228

refuge from the plague, 236 ;

Sygerus, Nicholas, sendi P. a MS.

assigns P. a house in return for

of Homer, 185-6

the intended reversion of his

library, 241 ; the books never

Talleyrand, Cardinal, 164, 173

claimed ; real origin of the Mai-

Tolomci, Enea, of Siena; P.'s

cian library, ib. \ Boccaccio's

Latin poetical letter to him,

S3

P., 246-7 : his eulogy of her, i». ;

Travel: P.'s love of and first

Cretan victory, 248-50; four

tour, 43 ; visits Paris, Flanders,

young men's judgment, 266;

and the Rhine, 58-60; visits

war with Padua, 291-2; P.'s

Rome, 77-9. and probably
Morocco and the English

embassy, ib.

Ventoux. Mont, P.'s ascent, 67-71

Channel, 79-80

Verme, Luchino del, 24S-9
Verona {v. also Scala), 66, 115,

Tribune, v. Rienzi

Triumphs, v. Cataeniere

lie, 136, 156, 184-5. 190 ^^

Tuscan popular poetry, 1 1

Vicenia, 155 ^H

INDEX

319

Villafranca, v, Rinaldo

Villani, Giovanni and Matteo,
54-5, 61, 123-4, 178, 214, 242

Virgil : MS. spared by Petracco,
20 ; the Codex of the Ambrosian
Library and its fly-leaf, 86^7 ;
P.'s poetical letter to Virgil,
136 ; notes on the fly-leaf, 137-8,
233-5 ; P-'s belief about the
Eclogues, 224

Visconti, the, of Milan : worst of
the despots, 177 ; their relations
with Charles IV, 190, 192, 195-7 ;
their wars with their neighbours
and with the Church, 195, 199,
278-80; denounced by Busso-
lari, 198

Visconti, Azzo, 55

Visconti, Bemab6, 179, 184, 194,
252

Visconti, Galeazzo : saves P., 182 ;
accession to power, 184 ; sus-
pected of killing his brother,
194 ; engages Pand. Malatesta,
ib, ; instigates P.'s letter to

Bussolari, 199 ; his royal alli-
ances, 230, 279 ; P.'s friendship
and visits, 247, 251, 259, 278-9;
enslaves Pa via and builds castle,
252
Visconti, Gian - Galeazzo, pos-
sessed P.'s Virgil, 87 ; married
in childhood, 230; possessed
many of P.'s books, 242
Visconti, Giovanni, Archbishop
of Milan : persuades P. to settle
in Milan, 177-9 ; his character,
ib, ; dominates and honours P.,
180-2 ; assumes sovereignty
over Genoa, 183 ; death, 184
Visconti, Luchino, 102-3, 144,

178
Visconti, Marco, P.'s godson, 184
Visconti, Matteo, 184, 194
Visconti, Violante, 279-80
Vita Solitaria^ De^ v, De Vita

Solitaria
Viterbo, 276, 277

Zanobi da Strada, 175, 192, 204

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